In an airstrike on Gaza, the Israeli army hit the house of a doctor and killed nine out of her ten children, the hospital where she works in the city of Khan Younis stated.
Nasser Hospital said that one child of pediatrician Alaa al-Najjar and her husband survived the attack and that they were seriously injured. Graeme Groom, a United Kingdom (UK) surgeon working at the hospital, said he operated on her surviving 11-year-old boy.
A video shared by the director of the Palestinian Ministry of Health shows people pulling out small burned bodies from the rubble after the attack in Khan Younis on Friday.
The Israeli army was contacted for a comment.
In a general statement on Saturday, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said they had hit more than 100 targets across Gaza during the previous day.
The Ministry of Health stated that the Israeli army killed at least 74 people during the 24 hours up to around noon on Saturday.
Doctor Munir Al-Bursh, director at the Ministry of Health, said on Twitter that the al-Najjar family home was hit just minutes after the husband returned home from dropping off his wife at work.
Dr. Al-Bursh said that the eldest child of doctor al-Najjar was 12 years old.
Groom said that the father of the children was “very seriously injured,” in a video published on the Instagram account of another UK surgeon working at Nasser Hospital, Victoria Rose.
He said he asked about the father, also a doctor at the hospital, and was told that “he has no political or military ties and does not appear prominent on social media.”
He described it as an “unimaginable” situation for Dr. al-Najjar.
Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defense agency run by Hamas, said on Friday afternoon on Telegram that his teams had found eight bodies and several injured from the al-Najjar house near a gas station in Khan Younis.
The hospital initially posted on Facebook that eight children had been killed, and two hours later updated that number to nine.
Another doctor, Yousef Abu al-Rish, said in a statement published by the Ministry of Health that he arrived in the operating room and found Dr. al-Najjar waiting for information about her surviving son, and tried to comfort her.
In an interview, relative Youssef al-Najjar said: “Enough! Have mercy on us! We are begging all countries, the international community, the people, Hamas, and all factions to have mercy on us. We are exhausted from displacement and hunger, enough!”
People in Gaza said they have no food, and malnourished mothers cannot breastfeed their babies.
A chronic water shortage is also worsening as desalination and hygiene facilities run out of fuel, and Israel’s growing military offensive is causing new waves of displacement.
Israel has said that the goal of the blockade was to pressure Hamas to release hostages still held in Gaza and accused Hamas of stealing supplies, which the group denies.
Since the beginning of the ground and air attacks on Gaza, the Israeli army has killed at least 53.901 people, including at least 16.500 children, according to data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
