A pediatrician and a 10 -year -old mother is mourning for the death of nine of her young children after an Israeli air attack arrived at her house near Khan Younis in the South Gaza Strip on Friday, according to hospital officials.
Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar’s husband, also a doctor, was seriously injured and is now in intensive care. His only surviving son was also injured, according to Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, general director of the Hamas Gaza Ministry of Health.
“This is the reality that our medical staff in Gaza endures. The words fall short of describing the pain,” Al-Bursh said in a statement on Friday night. “In Gaza, not only health workers are attacked: Israel’s aggression goes further, eliminating entire families.”
Nasser’s medical complex, where Al-Najjar works as a pediatric specialist at the Al-Tahrir clinic, condolences expressed in a statement, saying: “We are speechless and our breaths suffocate before the horror of this tragedy.”
When they were asked to comment, Israel’s defense forces told ABC News that their plane on Friday “hit several suspects that were identified that operate from a structure adjacent to the FDI’s troops in the Khan Yunis area” and that the “claim on damage to non -involved civilians is under review.”
“The Khan Yunis area is a dangerous war zone,” added the FDI. “Before starting the operations there, the FDI evacuated civilians in this area for their own security.”
The mourners react while attending the funeral of the Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at the Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza Strip, on May 23, 2025.
Hatem Khaled/Reuters
Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, head of Pediatrics and Obstetrics of the Tahrir Clinic in Nasser Medical Complex, confirmed the incident, telling ABC News in a telephone interview on Saturday that Al-Najjar was working when he received news on Friday afternoon that the strikes had hit Qizan An-Najjar, the area where his family lives, south of Khan You.
“She felt for her heart that something happened to her family,” Al-Farra said. “He left, walked and tried to run without transport.”
“Unfortunately, he discovered that his house was completely destroyed,” he added.
Among the boys who were killed, five were boys and four girls, and the youngest was a seven-month-old daughter and the eldest son, a 12-year-old son, according to Al-Farra.
“They were completely burned,” he told ABC News.
The smoke rises from an air attack by the Israeli army to the south of Khan Younis, Gaza, on May 21, 2025.
ABDEL KAREEM HANA/AP
The only child who survived, the 11-year-old son of Al-Najjar, had to undergo two surgeries and remains critical in the hospital, according to Al-Farra. The father, Al-Najjar’s husband, also remains hospitalized in a critical condition after undergoing surgeries and may have to amputate a leg, said Al-Farra.
When asked if any humanitarian aid had reached Nasser Medical Complex, one of Gaza’s largest hospitals, Al-Farra told ABC News that they have not yet received anything because the armed gangs have stolen the small help in what they have distributed this week.
The World Food Program, the United Nations Food Assistance Branch, said more than a dozen aid trucks were looted in southern Gaza on Thursday night, since 2 million people in the territory devastated by the war face “extreme and hungry hunger without immediate measures.”
The looting occurred a few days after Israel succumbed to global pressure and relieved its 11 -week block in all supplies that enter the neighbor Gaza, which according to UN and other international aid organizations have caused generalized malnutrition and conditions will probably lead to the famine.
The aid block came into force in early March when the initial phase of a high two -month fire expired between Israel and the militant rulers of Gaza, Hamas.
The Israeli government is working with the United States to establish aid distribution points in the south and center of Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday. But the plan, which will begin on Monday, has faced criticism of established help organizations that have been operating within Gaza during the last 19 months.
The war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, 2023, after Hamas fighters entered Israel and killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages. There are still 58 hostages in captives for Hamas, 20 of which it is presumed that they are alive. It is believed that Hamas is holding the bodies of four Americans.
The war has affected the Palestinians, with more than 53,000 dead in Gaza since the conflict began, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, directed by Hamas. Although statistics do not distinguish between military and non -military casualties, women and children represent tens of thousands of this number, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
-ABC News’ Samy Zayara and Nasser Atta contributed to this report.
