Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
A tragic missile strike in Gaza has claimed the lives of nine of a paediatrician’s ten children, leaving her surviving son severely injured and her husband critically wounded.
Dr Alaa Al Najjar, who works at Al Tahrir Clinic within the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work when the strike hit their home in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage released by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows rescuers pulling the bodies of at least seven small children from the rubble, battling fires and searching through the collapsed building. The children’s remains were wrapped in body bags as they were removed from the scene.
Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, also a physician, was stretchered out and taken to hospital in critical condition.
According to Dr Muneer Alboursh, director general of Gaza’s health ministry, their eldest child was only 12 years old.
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” Dr Alboursh wrote on social media. “In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable.”
Dr Graeme Groom revealed in a video diary that the last patient he treated that day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and appeared younger due to his condition. The boy’s father was also severely injured, though it was unclear whether he was the intended target.
Dr Victoria Rose noted the family’s home was near a petrol station, speculating that the bomb may have triggered a large fire.
Dr Groom emphasised that both parents were doctors with no political or military ties. “The father had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem prominent on social media, yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who now faces the prospect of losing her husband,” he said.
“It is a particularly sad day,” he added, while Dr Rose commented, “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
The strike occurred amid ongoing conflict following Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 abducted. Israel’s military response has devastated large parts of Gaza and reportedly killed over 53,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
