Israeli airstrike hits home of married doctors in Gaza, killing nine of their 10 children

British surgeon at mother’s hospital says the Gaza-based family had no political connections.

Workers collect human remains after an Israeli strike in Khan Younis killed nine of married doctors’ 10 children. Picture: Gaza Civil Defense via AP

An Israeli airstrike hit the home of a pair of married doctors in Gaza on Friday (local time) and killed nine of their 10 children.

Alaa al-Najjar, a paediatrician in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work when the strike hit her and her husband’s home in the Qizan Al-Najjar area, south of Khan Younis.

One child and husband Hamdi al-Najjar survived, but were severely injured and are in intensive care. The youngest child killed in the attack, Sidar, was less than 12 months old.

The mother of 10 had left home early that morning to work with her husband, also a doctor at the Nasser, driving her to work.

Just minutes after he returned home, a missile struck their house. The eldest of the nine children who died, Yahya, was 12. Their bodies were brought into the morgue of the hospital where the Najjars works.

Their 10th child, Adam, 11, survived but with critical injuries and remains in hospital.

A video shared by the director of the Hamas-run health ministry shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.

An Israeli military spokesman said on Saturday that an aircraft struck “a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure adjacent to IDF troops” in Khan Younis. “The area is a dangerous war zone. Before beginning operations there, the IDF evacuated civilians from this area for their own safety. The claim regarding harm to uninvolved civilians is under review,” he added.

Alaa Najjar mourned the loss of her children at a funeral on Friday. The mother reportedly collapsed upon seeing the remains of her children brought into the hospital.

At the funeral, she said farewell to her children, who were covered in white sheets placed on gurneys.

Samah al-Najjar, a niece of Hamdi, the husband injured in the attack, said on the morning of the strike, she heard “massive and intense” explosions. “The Israeli forces were all around us,” said Samah, 36, a nutritionist.

“While trying to flee the area, we saw my uncle’s house was completely destroyed. My mother shouted ‘Hamdi, Hamdi!, screaming and crying ‘My brother, my brother!’ but there was no response.”

Samah’s sister Sahar, a pharmacist, couldn’t recognise the bodies of her cousins because “They were completely burnt”.

Graeme Groom, a British surgeon working in the hospital who operated on the couple’s surviving child, said the incident was “unbearably cruel”.

The 11-year-old boy was “covered in fragment injuries and had several substantial lacerations,” Dr Groom told the BBC. “His left arm was just about hanging off.”

Dr Groom said the father, who is still in intensive care, “had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, and has the prospect of losing her husband”.

Victoria Rose, another British doctor working at the hospital, said the Najjar family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire.”

She added this “is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”

Gazan civil defence teams said the strike completely destroyed the home and sparked an intense blaze.

On Saturday, the IDF said it was investigating “several cases” of soldiers allegedly using Palestinian civilians as human shields in Gaza. The use of human shields is forbidden by Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions and is considered a war crime. The claims were made by Palestinians as well as Israeli soldiers. “The use of Palestinians as human shields, or otherwise coercing them to participate in military operations, is strictly prohibit­ed in IDF orders,” an Israeli spokesman said.

The Times