- The mother was one of three people killed in an attack in the Maghazi refugee camp.
Heartbreaking images show the tragic moment when a Palestinian ambulance worker realized that the body he was carrying was that of his own mother, killed in an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza.
‘Oh God, I swear! She is my mother! I didn’t know it was her!’ Abed Bardini sobbed as he leaned over his mother, Samira, cradling her head in his arms.
Bardini had unknowingly sat in the ambulance next to her body, wrapped in a blood-stained white sheet, as the vehicle bounced along broken roads for about 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) toward Al Martyrs Hospital. -Aqsa in Deir al-Balah.
He made the horrifying discovery after the bloody sheet covering his body was lifted at the hospital, where other Red Crescent doctors desperately tried to comfort him.
Samira was one of three people killed in the Israeli attack on a car in the Maghazi refugee camp on Wednesday, according to Palestinian health officials and journalists, while at least 10 were injured.
Abed Bardini sobbed as he leaned over his mother, Samira, cradling her head in his arms.
The Palestinian ambulance worker sat in the morgue next to Samira’s body with his head in his hands.
Hospital health officials said two of the dead were men sitting in the vehicle and that the explosion fatally injured Samira Bardini, 61, while she was nearby.
Abed Bardini was in one of two ambulances sent to the scene.
Back at the hospital, he unloaded the stretcher with practiced professionalism, squinting in the afternoon sun as he carried the body across the hospital courtyard.
Inside, medical staff removed the blanket to check for signs of life, and Bardini’s forces collapsed.
Later, no longer crying, he sat in the morgue next to Samira’s body with his head in his hands, comforted by his Red Crescent colleagues.
They held a funeral prayer over his body in the parking lot, then Bardini personally helped carry the body to an ambulance for burial.
An Israeli military spokesman had no immediate comment on the attack.
Israel says it carries out targeted strikes in Gaza against Palestinian terrorists and tries to avoid harming civilians. But strikes often kill women and children.
A view of the vehicle that was destroyed after Israeli attacks on the Maghazi refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on October 30, 2024.
Samira was one of three people killed in the Israeli attack on a car in the Maghazi refugee camp on Wednesday, according to Palestinian health officials.
A Palestinian child sits on the rubble of the destroyed Maghazi Camp Services Club building following an Israeli attack on the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on October 24, 2024.
Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war.
Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Wednesday that 102 deaths were recorded in the last 24 hours.