Palestinian doctor who lost nine children in Israeli attack dies from wounds

A Palestinian doctor, who lost nine children in an Israeli strike in late May, has died from wounds sustained in the same attack.

Hamdi al-Najjar, 40, is survived by his wife Alaa al-Najjar, a doctor at al-Tahrir hospital within the Nasser Medical Complex, and his 11-year-old son Adam, who is still receiving treatment for his injuries. 

Shortly before the strike on 23 May, Alaa had left for work with Hamdi, who then returned home.

Not long after, an Israeli strike hit their house in the Qizan al-Najjar area in southern Khan Younis, killing nine of their 10 children and wounding the 10th.

Alaa, a paediatric specialist, was treating victims of Israeli bombardments that day when her own children and husband were brought to her.

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Najjar sustained serious wounds and remained in intensive care until he died on Saturday, nearly a week after the attack.

Footage released by the Palestinian Civil Defence showed rescue crews pulling the children’s bodies from the rubble, as flames engulfed the family's home.

Hampered by a lack of proper equipment and the vast scale of destruction, civil defence workers could be heard calling into the rubble, desperately searching for signs of life.

The civil defence team reported that seven bodies were recovered and transferred to Nasser hospital, where their mother works. Two others, including a six-month-old baby, remained trapped under the rubble at the time.

The children were identified as Yahya, Rakan, Ruslan, Jubran, Eve, Revan, Sayden, Luqman and Sidra.

Speaking to Middle East Eye following the Israeli assault on the family home, Ali al-Najjar, Hamdi's brother, said he had found Hamdi lying motionless on the ground, with his son beside him. The home was engulfed in flames.

“The children were completely burnt,” he said. “I carried my nephew Adam and my wounded cousin and rushed them to the hospital.”

Moments later, he returned to the burning home - only to see his sister-in-law, the children's mother, arrive in horror. “She had run on foot from the hospital to the house,” he said.

“Four of her children were pulled out, charred, right in front of her eyes,” he said.

Ali described the ongoing agony of not knowing the fate of two missing children. “Seven children were pulled from under the rubble, and two - Yahya, 13, and Sidra, just six months old - are still missing. We cannot find them.”

He said civil defence teams resumed the search the next morning but found nothing. “Their mother cannot even identify the bodies, the children are so badly burned she cannot tell who is who.”

Ali questioned the reason behind the strike. “I don’t know why they were targeted. Why would they target my brother? There’s no reason, unless it was because his wife is a doctor.”

Collapse of healthcare system

The health ministry reported on Sunday that at least 54,418 Palestinians have been killed in ongoing Israeli attacks across the blockaded Strip.

According to the Government Media Office in Gaza, at least 1,580 of those killed since 7 October 2023 were medical personnel. 

Earlier this year, the UN warned that a "pattern" of destruction of Gaza's hospitals by Israeli forces has pushed its healthcare system to the "point of almost complete collapse".

Since the report was published, the Israeli military has repeatedly targeted healthcare professionals, civil defence teams, aid workers and even patients.

The latest instance of Israeli aggression on healthcare came on Sunday when the Noura al-Kaabi Kidney Dialysis Centre in the northern Gaza Strip was bombed. 

The Palestinian health ministry warned that the destruction of the centre poses a "catastrophic threat to the health of kidney patients, the consequences of which are unpredictable".

"The occupation is working according to a dangerous methodology to empty the northern Gaza Strip of hospitals and specialised care centres," it added in a statement. 

middleeasteye.net