'One of the most heartbreaking tragedies' Doctor's last goodbye before airstrike kills nine children

Doctor's last goodbye before airstrike kills nine children

- By Malak A Tantesh

IN THE EARLY HOURS of last Friday, as she did every day, Dr Alaa al-Najjar said goodbye to her 10 children before leaving the house.

The youngest, Sayden, six months old, was still sleeping. And like every day, with war raging in Gaza and Israeli strikes landing just metres from her neighbourhood in Khan Younis, Najjar worried about leaving them at home.

But Najjar, 35, had little choice. One of Gaza’s dwindling number of medics, a respected paediatrician at the Nasser medical complex, she had to go to work to care for injured babies who had barely survived Israeli attacks. She could never have imagined that farewell to her family would be her last.

A few hours later, the charred bodies of seven of her children, killed by an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis, arrived at her hospital. Two other bodies, including Sayden's, remained under the rubble. Of her 10 children, only one had survived, along with their father, Hamdi al-Najjar, 40, also a doctor. Both are now in hospital.

"It's one of the most heartbreaking tragedies since the beginning of the conflict," Mohammed Saqer, the head of nursing at Nasser hospital, told the Guardian. "And it happened to a paediatrician who dedicated her life to saving children, only to have her own motherhood stolen in a moment of fire and deafening silence."

FOOTAGE SHARED by the director of Gaza's health ministry and verified by the Guardian shows the burned, dismembered bodies of children being pulled from the rubble of Najjar's building near a petrol station as flames still engulfed the family's home.