A PATTERN OF DEADLY ATTACKS ON GAZA FAMILIES By Ben van der Merwe, Michelle Inez Simon, Kaitlin Tosh and Sophia Massam

Sky News

7 days ago

This is Ahmed Al-Hatta. He was killed by an Israeli strike on his family home on 18 March.
The strike took place at around 3am - when he was with his wife and their six children .
All of them were killed. The youngest, twin girls Banan and Janan, were just six years old.
Many more families were killed in their homes that night, by far the deadliest since late 2023.
By sunrise, the Al-Hattas were among at least 242 people killed.
By the end of the day, the total would stand at 465.
Since then, over 8,500 people have been killed.
That has brought the total number of fatalities during the conflict to over 60,000.
Data shared exclusively with Sky News by Gaza's health ministry allows us, for the first time, to show the date of every death since the war began.
Click to read how Sky News verified the data.
Across almost two years of war, 17 days stand out as the deadliest – those when more than 450 people died.
Women and children made up a much higher share of deaths on these days than on others.
Looking further into the data, we found out why – a pattern of strikes on family homes.
Click to read how Sky identified families in the data
Almost half of all people killed on these days (44%) died alongside a family member, compared with less than a third (30%) on other days.
Strikes on families reached their peak on 18 March, accounting for almost two-thirds of all deaths.
The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas, but most of those killed were women and children.
Mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central Gaza Strip on 18 March. Pic: Reuters/Ramadan Abed
In order to understand how those strikes led to so many civilian casualties, Sky News analysed all 465 deaths recorded that day by Gaza's health ministry.
Out of 112 strikes verified by Sky News, just 16 killed known or suspected Hamas officials and militants. On average, nine family members were killed alongside them.
The 11 deadliest strikes on that day, those which killed 10 or more people, all took place before dawn – when families were most likely to be at home and sleeping.
These 11 strikes killed six Hamas militants, along with 207 of their neighbours and family members
"It's reasonable to expect when people go home at night they... will be surrounded by family members," says Brian Finucane, who spent a decade advising the US State Department on conflict law.
In April 2024, Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call reported, based on conversations with six anonymous Israeli intelligence officers, that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was routinely targeting suspected militants in their homes at night.
The officers reportedly said that this was "because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses".
"It seems clearly an excessive use of force and not proportional."
Dr Craig Jones, a senior lecturer at Newcastle University and an expert in conflict law, has been interviewing survivors of such attacks, which he terms "familicide".
He says Israel has previously demonstrated the ability to wait until targets have left their family home before striking.
"They're also showing now a capacity to wait, but... [they're now] waiting for the operative to go into a place where civilians are living," he says.
"It seems clearly an excessive use of force and not proportional."
In response to Sky's findings, an IDF spokesperson said its directives instruct commanders to apply the basic rules of the law of armed conflict, "particularly distinction, proportionality, and precautions".
"Exceptional incidents are subject to lessons-learned processes and are thoroughly examined and addressed by the appropriate enforcement mechanisms," they added.
"The IDF remains committed to the rule of law and will continue to operate in accordance with [the law of armed conflict]."
Hamas did not respond to a request for comment.
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a residential building in Jabalia in northern Gaza on 18 March. Pic: Reuters/Mahmoud Issa
How the attacks on 18 March unfolded
At around 8pm on the evening of 17 March, Palestinians started to notice flares in the skies over Gaza City.
It was two months since a fragile ceasefire had been agreed, and negotiations over a second phase were about to collapse.
Shortly after midnight, the bombing began.
Using satellite imagery and more than 30 geolocated videos from social media, Sky's Data and Forensics Unit has mapped the violence that unfolded that night.
The first airstrike, in North Gaza, was reported at 12.46am.
Within minutes, there were reports of explosions across Gaza. Residents captured footage of the strikes as they landed through the night, like this video from Gaza City.
Rescue workers immediately began searching the rubble for the dead and wounded. This video was posted at 2.53am.
As the sun rose, bombs continued to fall on family homes.
That included the home of Abdulqader and Wafa al Salihi, who lived with their one-year-old son Nasser in a block of flats in central Gaza.
All three were killed in a strike on their building, along with Wafa's eight-year-old nephew.
Sky News found no evidence that either parent had any ties to Hamas.
Elsewhere, Palestinians surveyed the damage from the night before. The strike on this house killed Mohammed al Madi and his two adult daughters.
One of the deadliest strikes on a family home that night, and among the deadliest of the entire war, happened here in eastern Rafah.
The strike, which took place at around 1am, hit the home of the Jarghoun family.
Among those killed were 71-year-old Eid Jarghoun and three of his adult children. Two of them were killed alongside their own wives and children.
In total, 17 family members were killed, including four women and seven children.
The youngest victim, Lian, had celebrated her second birthday just five days earlier.
The video below, verified by Sky News, shows their bodies being retrieved from the rubble of the house.
The IDF told Sky News that one of those killed, Jihad Jarghoun, ran a weapons manufacturing workshop for Hamas. Sky News could not independently verify this claim.
Conflict-monitoring group Airwars, which has compiled reports on over 1,100 Gaza airstrikes, says the IDF frequently assassinates targets at night in their family homes, leading to large-scale civilian casualties.
"This is actually the conflict we have documented with more families killed alongside each other than any other conflict we've looked at over the last decade," says Airwars executive director Emily Tripp.
View of destruction in North Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border between Israel and Gaza, 18 March 2025. Pic: Reuters/Amir Cohen
As the number of deaths in Gaza passes 60,000, there is still no end to the war in sight.
At around 10.30pm on Monday night, a bomb hit the tent of the Agha family, killing the parents, uncle and brother of 11-year old Safa al Agha.
On Tuesday morning, Safa mourned over the body of her mother.
"We haven't been happy yet," she said. "We were sitting in the living room, then all of sudden..."
"Who did you leave us for?" she said. "My dear mama, may God have mercy on you."
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
CREDITS
Data journalism: Ben van der Merwe
Reporting: Ben van der Merwe, Kaitlin Tosh, Michelle Inez Simon and Sophia Massam
Editors: Chris Howard and Natasha Muktarsingh
Production: Michelle Inez Simon, Mary Poynter, Kaitlin Tosh and Reece Denton
Shorthand development: Kate Schneider and Kaitlin Tosh
Graphics: Taylor Stuart, Annie Adam and Bria Anderson
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