26-05-2025
Gaza doctor begged to hold daughter's body after strike killed nine of her children
Warning: Graphic content
Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip: A Palestinian doctor who rushed home from work after an airstrike hit her Gaza home begged rescuers to let her hold the body of her young daughter as they pulled the child from the rubble.
Paediatrician Alaa Najjar lost nine of her 10 children in the strike on Friday, colleagues from Nasser Hospital and Gaza's Health Ministry said, and her husband, also a doctor, was severely injured.
Hamdi Najjar, the doctor's husband, remains in critical condition with severe brain injuries, and their only surviving child, Adam, is in a moderate condition, said Ahmed al-Farra, the head of paediatric care at Nasser Hospital.
Al-Farra backed the family's account of the deaths of the children in the strike.
Video footage of the strike's aftermath showed Palestinian emergency workers carrying small, ashen bodies out of a building near the southern city of Khan Younis. As one was loaded onto a stretcher, a man could be heard shouting: 'There are still nine down there!'
Alaa Najjar arrived at the scene just as her daughter Revan's body was pulled out of the rubble, The Guardian reported. She tearfully begged rescuers to let her hold her one last time.
'Her [Revan's] body was completely burnt from the upper part, nothing remained of her skin or flesh,' brother-in-law Ali Najjar said. 'There are still two bodies of my brother's children we could not find: the oldest, [a] 12-year-old boy, Yahya, and the six-month-old girl, Sayden.'
