Report
Dr. Alaa al-Najjar has 10 children. Israel killed 9 of them.
When Alaa saw the disfigured bodies arrive, she collapsed. The horror was beyond all imagination. She had given birth just six months ago, and insisted on returning to work shortly afterwards.
When she saw the charred bodies of her seven children, she collapsed. Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, a pediatrician at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, had spent the whole day treating children. She had gone out in the morning with her husband, Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar, who returned home earlier. An Israeli airstrike hit their house, reducing it to rubble and setting off a blazing inferno. Videos filmed at the scene show rescuers pulling the children’s bodies out one by one.
Dr. al-Najjar had 10 children. Israeli bombs killed nine of them: Yahya, Rakan, Ruslan, Jubran, Eve, Revan, Sayden, Luqman and Sidra. Seven were taken to Nasser Hospital; two, including the six-month-old baby, remained beneath the debris. Only one child survived: 11-year-old Adam, rushed to surgery like his father, also in serious condition. They all suffered terrible burns in addition to their other wounds.
When Alaa saw the disfigured bodies arrive, she collapsed. The horror was beyond all imagination. She had given birth just six months ago, and insisted on returning to work shortly afterwards, amid desperate shortages of staff, medicines and electricity.
The al-Najjar home is one of the “hundred targets” the Israeli army boasts that they’ve hit. As always, the press statements from the military are blathering on about tunnels, rocket-launch pads and combat posts, masking the slaughter of civilians underneath stories of battlefield success.
Her colleagues say the family had no ties to Hamas at all; everyone knows, however, that suspicion alone would suffice for Israel to justify killing nine children aged between 12 years and six months. And when it comes down to it, they don’t even need that: for months, the Israeli army has been wiping out entire families in its overt project to drive everyone from Gaza – dead or alive, it matters little.
Yaqeen Hammad was known as the youngest humanitarian volunteer and social-media activist in Gaza. She posted video diaries of daily life, resilience, rebuilding, courage. She played with children, prepared games and gifts for them, helped to raise funds and worked with several NGOs. A missile struck her house on Saturday in Deir al-Balah, killing her. Five others died and 50 were wounded while standing near the few trucks bringing flour into al-Mawasi, the so-called “humanitarian area”, where a new airstrike killed seven people.
At least 48 Palestinians were killed on Saturday. Al-Awda Hospital in the north of the Strip remains under siege. The health directorate reports that the Israeli military are shelling the area heavily and attacking ambulances trying to evacuate patients and the wounded.
An investigation published on Saturday by Associated Press shows that Israel’s use of Palestinian civilians as human shields has become systematic practice. These are not isolated events at the initiative of individual soldiers, but orders from higher up. One soldier, who asked to remain anonymous, told AP that almost every platoon used Gaza residents to enter buildings and tunnels they suspected were trapped with explosives. Nadav Weiman, executive director of Breaking the Silence, which collects testimonies from Israeli soldiers, said: “These are not isolated accounts; they point to a systemic failure and a horrifying moral collapse.”
Meanwhile, the United Nations and humanitarian organizations keep demanding that aid be allowed into Gaza. The trucks Israel has let through are almost nothing compared with the population’s needs. On Monday or Tuesday at the latest, management of food distribution is due to pass into the hands of the murky U.S.-created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). On Saturday, news came that a Swiss NGO had formally petitioned the authorities in the country, where the foundation is registered, to investigate its activities. Doubts are growing on many fronts about the real capacity and aims of an organization led by defense officials and wealthy American executives. The Washington Post published confidential papers revealing that these same figures harbor serious doubts about the project’s chances of success.
Senior commanders in the Israeli army have reportedly expressed a negative opinion as well. Nevertheless, according to a confidential document obtained by AP, Tel Aviv intends to allow international organizations to handle only non-food relief. For food, the Israeli government, backed by the United States, is staking everything on its new “mechanism”, excluding the UN and aid groups, in what could turn into an even greater tragedy for the Palestinian people.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/gaza-alaa-aveva-dieci-figli-e-israele-gliene-uccide-nove on 2025-05-25