Gaza: Eight children from one family, aged between two and five, were killed in an explosion

Small bodies are lined up on the floor of the Khan Younes morgue. They are all from one large family that lost ten members, including eight children, in one of the Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip. According to rescuers and eyewitnesses, they belong to the al-Bakri family clan. At the European Hospital, the remains of the seven children were placed in white burial blankets, ready to cover their bloody faces, surrounded by family members.

The population is paying a very high price for the war, sparked by the October 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip. More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel, most of them civilians who were shot, burned alive or died from mutilation on the first day of the attack. Israel’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 3,785 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to a tally Thursday from the Hamas health ministry, which recorded at least 1,524 child deaths.

First floor of the house

On Thursday, the Israeli army said it carried out hundreds of airstrikes against Hamas infrastructure in 24 hours. Plumes of smoke were visible in different sectors of the northern territory. After one of these raids, an AFP photographer noticed numerous signs of destruction on a street in Gaza: rubble, broken window glass, destroyed buildings.

To the south are Dyala (2 years), Ayman (3 years), Hamada (5 years) and Zaher (2 years) Bakri, as well as Uday and Jamal Abu Al-Najah, and Nabil and Asil Omran, aged between two and five years. the old ones “were sleeping when they (the Israelis, editor’s note) destroyed the house, which fell on their heads,” says 67-year-old Bakri family patriarch Abu Mohammad Wafi al-Bakri.

According to eyewitnesses, they were on the ground floor of a three-story building, between Khan Younes and Rafah, and their bodies were discovered an hour after the raid. “None of my children are associated with Palestinian organizations. There were no men in the house at the time of the explosion,” he adds.

Difficulties with humanitarian aid

In Rafah, another Israeli raid cost the lives of Arij’s mother Marwan al-Banna and her two daughters, Sarah and Samya, under the age of ten, according to Palestinian medical sources. Arij Marwan al-Banna fled his home in Gaza City after the Israeli army ordered the evacuation of some 1.1 million residents in the small territory’s north to take refuge with his parents in Rafah, further south. She was seven months pregnant. Doctors at Rafah Hospital performed an autopsy by Caesarean section, but the baby was already dead, a medical source said.

Medical staff in Gaza believe they can no longer treat the wounded due to shortages of medicine, water and fuel for generators. The Hamas government’s health ministry in Gaza assured on Thursday that the Deir el-Balah hospital, located in the center of this small area of ​​more than two million people, lacks medical equipment. Israel massed its troops around Palestinian territory in preparation for the invasion and cut off power, fuel and water to parts of the Gaza Strip.

Ahmad al-Mulla, armed with two plastic bottles in Gaza City, says his mother sent him to a water distribution: “Sometimes we wait in line for two hours only to realize there is no more water. Water is life, no person can survive without it,” says the teenager. “The situation is very difficult. No water, no electricity, no food,” adds Um Mohammed al-Mulla. She notes that the water in baby bottles is often salty, which can make babies sick.

During his visit on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden received Israel’s green light for aid trucks from Egypt to enter the Rafah crossing, the only one not controlled by Israel. On Thursday, media close to Egyptian intelligence assured that the terminal would open on Friday. “We call on those who can do this (to miss humanitarian aid, editor’s note) to make this happen, please, to avoid the tragedy that awaits us,” pleaded the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom.

Humanitarian aid must arrive in Gaza “every day” to be able to meet needs, said a senior WHO official, who believes the planned 20 truckloads of aid will not be enough.