Nine young children have been killed after an Israeli airstrike hit the home of a doctor in Gaza, a hospital has said.
Only one of Dr Alaa al-Najjar’s ten children is said to have survived the missile strike on their home near Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Friday.
Graeme Groom, a British surgeon working in the hospital, said he had operated on her surviving 11-year-old boy, who was injured along with his father.
Dr al-Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was reportedly at work when nine of her children, who ranged in age from seven months to 12 years old, were killed.
She ran home to find her family’s house on fire, Ahmad al-Farra, head of the hospital’s pediatric department, told The Associated Press.
Horrifying footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble. Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
It comes after Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had struck more than 100 targets across Gaza over the past day.
The Independent has contacted Israel’s ministry of defence.
According to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, the missile hit shortly after the doctor’s husband had returned home from dropping her at work.
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure,” he wrote in a post X.
“Words fall short in describing the pain. 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” for Dr Al Najjar.
In a video diary posted on social media, Dr Groom said her 11-year-old son was his last patient of the day on Friday. The boy was injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”, he said.
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
The bodies of 79 people killed by Israeli strikes have been taken to hospitals in the past 24 hours, Gaza ‘s health ministry said on Saturday, a toll that does not include hospitals in the battered north which it said were now inaccessible.
The health ministry said the new deaths took the war’s toll to 53,901 since the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023, that sparked the 19 months of fighting.
