One by one, Palestinian rescue workers pulled out the charred bodies of the children; some were dismembered, their tiny blackened figures curled up. Carefully, they wrapped the corpses – which nearly fell apart with each movement – in small white body bags. All were siblings, nine in total, found in the still-smoldering rubble of their home in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, on the afternoon of Friday, May 23.

In a video filmed by Gaza Civil Defense, rescuers lifted the body of their father, Hamdi al-Najjar, a doctor at Nasser Hospital, onto a stretcher. He was in critical condition. Only one of his 10 children, Adam, age 11, survived – he has undergone several surgeries. Their mother, pediatrician Alaa al-Najjar, was unharmed: she had just begun her hospital shift at 2:30 pm at Nasser Hospital, a 15-minute walk from their home.

Her husband's brother, Ali Al-Najjar, rushed over as soon as he heard the explosion, arriving at the same time as the rescue workers. "I found Adam lying on the asphalt, covered in blood. I saw my brother, 25 meters away, on the ground, a wound on his hand, hemorrhaging from his head and chest," he recounted, visibly traumatized, in an interview with a Palestinian journalist from Al Araby TV channel.

You have 80.63% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.