Four-day-old twins were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza while their father, Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan, was at the local government office to register their birth. His wife, Joumana Arafa, a pharmacist, had delivered the twins via caesarean section four days earlier and announced their birth on Facebook. While Abuel-Qomasan was registering the births, neighbors informed him that their shelter near Deir al-Balah had been bombed.
“I don’t know what happened,” he told the AP while sitting at the hospital where their bodies were taken, holding the twins’ birth certificates. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.”
Family Tragedies Include Deaths of Newborns and Survivors Struggling for Survival
The strike that killed the newborns – a boy, Asser, and a girl, Ayssel – also killed their mother, Arafa, as well as her mother, the twins’ grandmother. Abuel-Qomasan and his wife had heeded orders to evacuate Gaza City in the opening weeks of the war. They sought shelter in central Gaza, as the army had instructed.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes, AP reported.
Elsewhere, a three-month-old baby was the only member of her immediate family to survive an Israeli airstrike near the southern city of Khan Younis in which 10 people were killed including her five siblings, aged five to 12.
The strike late on Monday also killed Reem Abu Hayyah’s parents and the parents of three other children. Reem and the other three surviving children were all wounded in the strike.
“There is no one left except this baby,” said Reem’s aunt, Soad Abu Hayyah. “Since this morning, we have been trying to feed her formula, but she does not accept it, because she is used to her mother’s milk.”
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Gaza Health Ministry Reports 115 Newborns Killed Amid Escalating Conflict
The health ministry in Gaza said 115 newborns had been killed in the territory since the war began. Almost 40,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October; thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble. About 1,200 people were killed when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October and 250 taken hostage.
The Israeli military claims it tries to avoid harming Palestinian civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense residential areas.
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