At least 16 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on the birth of newborn twins, just four days old, Palestinian medical officials said.
Baby Asser and baby Ayssel were tragically killed alongside their mother at home while their father, Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan, went to collect their birth certificates.
While he was out, he received a call from his neighbours telling him that the airstrike had hit his home in the city of Deir al Balah, killing his family, including his mother-in-law.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “They told me it was a projectile that hit the house.”
“I didn’t even have time to celebrate them,” added the recently bereaved father and widower.
Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan cries and wails as he shows the birth certificates of his twins after receiving the news that his wife, his four-day-old twin babies and his mother-in-law had died.
This image was widely shared on social media and purportedly shows the twins shortly after their birth.
Footage shows hysterical father being comforted by others in hospital
The footage shows the hysterical father being comforted by others in hospital as he tearfully holds up the twins’ birth certificates.
His wife, Joumana Arafa, a pharmacist, had given birth by Caesarean section and announced the twins’ arrival on Facebook over the weekend.
The couple had followed orders to evacuate Gaza City in the early weeks of the war and headed further south, where they sought refuge in central Gaza, as ordered by the army.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says 115 babies have been born and died in the war-torn enclave since the conflict erupted following a Hamas attack on Israelis in October.
On Tuesday, authorities said the 16 dead included four women and seven children, while four other children were orphaned.
Ten people were killed in an attack late Monday on a house near the southern town of Khan Younis, where Israel has ordered mass evacuations in recent days, saying it must act against Palestinian militants.
The bodies, counted by the AP news agency, were taken to Nasser Hospital, where among the wounded was a three-month-old baby.
The tragic girl, named Reem Abu Hayyah, was the only member of her family to survive an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Monday night.
Reem Abu Hayyah (pictured), just three months old, was the only member of her family to survive an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Monday night.
The Israeli strike destroyed a house near the southern town of Khan Younis, killing 10 people. Among the dead were Abu Hayyah’s parents and five siblings, aged between 5 and 12, as well as the parents of three other children. All four children were wounded in the attack.
Children injured in an Israeli attack on the home of a Palestinian family are seen in the Bureij refugee camp as others are also taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital.
Among the dead were Abu Hayyah’s parents and five siblings, aged between 5 and 12, as well as the parents of three other children. All four children were wounded in the attack.
“There is no one left except this baby,” said her aunt, Soad Abu Hayyah. “Since this morning we have been trying to feed her formula, but she won’t accept it, because she is used to her mother’s milk.”
The Abu al-Qumsan family was killed in another attack near Deir al-Balah, while another attack in central Gaza killed a man and his nephew.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the attacks.
The IDF says it tries to avoid harming Palestinian civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because the militants operate in dense residential areas, sometimes taking shelter and launching attacks from homes, schools, mosques and other civilian buildings.
But the military rarely comments on individual attacks, which often kill women and children. Gaza’s health ministry says nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, without specifying how many were combatants.
The updated death toll from Palestinian officials comes as the United States approved a $20 billion arms sale to Israel, including dozens of fighter jets and advanced air-to-air missiles, the State Department announced.
The father was comforted by others at the hospital as he cried hysterically.
On Tuesday, Abu al Qumsan had gone to register births at a local government office. While he was there, neighbours called to tell him that the house where he was sheltering with his family had been bombed (pictured: Abu al Qusam standing next to the bodies of his family)
A man carries a bottle of water as the Israeli army issues an evacuation warning to Palestinians in the Hamad area of Khan Yunis, Gaza.
Congress was notified of the impending sale, which includes more than 50 F-15 fighter jets, advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, or AMRAAMs, 120mm tank ammunition and high-explosive mortars, and tactical vehicles.
Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 250 in the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that sparked the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often said that “they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents” to illustrate the brutality of the attack, most recently in his speech to the US Congress last month.
Israel’s offensive has left thousands of orphans, so many that local doctors use an acronym when registering them: WCNSF, or “wounded child, no surviving family.”
The United Nations estimated in February that some 17,000 children in Gaza are currently unaccompanied, and the number has likely increased since then.
The Abu Hayyah family was taking refuge in an area from which Israel had ordered people to evacuate in recent days.
It was one of several such orders that have led hundreds of thousands of people to seek refuge in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone made up of squalid and overcrowded tent camps along the coast.
The vast majority of Gaza’s population has fled their homes, often several times. The coastal strip, which is just 40 kilometres long by about 11 kilometres wide, has been completely cut off by Israeli forces since May.
Some 84 percent of Gaza has been placed under evacuation orders by the Israeli military, according to the United Nations.
Many families have ignored evacuation orders because they say no place feels safe, or because they cannot make the arduous journey on foot, or because they fear they will never be able to return to their homes, even after the