In a tragic incident, newborn twins Asser and Ayssel, just four days old, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Their father, Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan, was at a local government office to collect their birth certificates when the attack occurred.
While Abu al-Qumsan was away, neighbors informed him that his home in Deir al Balah had been bombed. The airstrike also claimed the lives of his wife and the twins’ grandmother. “I don’t know what happened,” Abu al-Qumsan said. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.” He added, “I didn’t even have the time to celebrate them.”
The Gaza health ministry, controlled by Hamas, reports that 115 infants have been born and then killed during the ongoing conflict.
According to the Associated Press, the family had evacuated Gaza City in the early weeks of the Israel-Gaza war, following an evacuation order from the Israeli army. They sought shelter in central Gaza as directed.
The BBC has reached out to the Israeli army for comments on this specific airstrike and is awaiting a response. Israel maintains that it aims to avoid civilian casualties and blames the deaths on Hamas’s tactics of operating in densely populated residential areas and using civilian buildings for shelter. However, the Israeli military rarely comments on individual strikes.
Recent weeks have seen several attacks on such shelters. On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike on a school building in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced Palestinians, killed more than 70 people, according to a hospital director. An Israeli military spokesperson claimed the school was being used as a Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility, a claim denied by Hamas. The BBC could not independently verify the numbers provided by either side.
The conflict began on October 7, when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. This attack led to a large-scale Israeli military offensive in Gaza. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reports that more than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing Israeli campaign.
