Nine babies born to a Malian woman this week will need to spend “two to three months” in incubators, the clinic where they were born has said.

LIB reported how Halima Cissé, 25, gave birth to nonuplets – five girls and four boys in Morocco on Tuesday, May 4, after being sent there for delivery by the Malian government. Read here.

Now, Professor Youssef Alaoui of the Ain Borja clinic in Casablanca, Morocco, has told the AFP news that the babies will have to spend more months in an incubator if they are to survive.

Professor Alaoui said the case was “extremely rare” and “exceptional”.

He also revealed that Ms Cissé was 25 weeks pregnant when she was admitted and his team managed to extend her term to 30 weeks. Ten doctors and 25 paramedics assisted at the delivery. She gave birth through caesarian section.

The babies weighed between 500g and 1kg (1.1lb and 2.2lb) when they were born.

“The mother is now in a good condition she’s not in danger any more. We wish her and the babies a speedy recovery,” he said.

Ms Cissé’s husband, Adjudant Kader Arby, is still in Mali with the couple’s older daughter. He says he has been in touch with his wife in Morocco and is not worried about the family’s future.

“God gave us these children. He is the one to decide what will happen to them. I’m not worried about that. When the almighty does something, he knows why,” he told BBC Afrique.

Two sets of nonuplets have previously been recorded – one born to a woman in Australia in 1971 and another to a woman in Malaysia in 1999 – but none of the babies survived more than a few days.

A woman who had eight babies in the US in 2009 holds the Guinness World Record for the most children delivered at a single birth to survive. Nadya Suleman’s octuplets have grown up and are now 12 years old. She conceived them through in vitro fertilisation.