On-duty Gaza doctor receives own 9 children killed in Israeli strike

In one of the countless harrowing stories that mirror the tiniest drip of anguish in Gaza, an unimaginable tragedy befell pediatrician Dr. Alaa al-Najjar: her nine children arrived at the very emergency room she works in, not in need of care, but lifeless, wrapped in white shrouds.

An Israeli airstrike had struck the family’s home in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, early Saturday morning.

Dr. Alaa, a pediatric specialist at Al-Tahrir Hospital within the Nasser Medical Complex, had left home that morning with her husband, Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar, who dropped her off for what began as a routine shift caring for sick and injured children.

She could never have anticipated that the hospital where she had dedicated her life to saving young lives would become the site of her deepest sorrow.

‘Israel’ strikes the very heart of families, futures
According to healthcare workers, the Israeli occupation not only targets medical personnel in their places of work, it follows them into their homes, striking at the very heart of their families and futures.

Dr. Munir al-Bursh, Director General of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, confirmed that the airstrike killed nine of Dr. Alaa’s 10 children, the eldest of whom was just 12 years old. Their names were: Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Jubran, Eve, Rivan, Sayden, Luqman, and Sidra.

Adam miraculously survived the bombing but suffered critical injuries. He is now receiving treatment in the hospital alongside his father, Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar, who remains in intensive care.

Gaza’s medical community under fire, literally
Dr. Alaa, who had spent years tending to the pain of other people’s children and comforting anxious mothers, now found herself on the other side of that divide, grieving her own children in the very halls she once moved through as a healer.

She stood silently before the bodies of her nine children in the same hospital she had devoted her career and life to. Searching for words to console herself, she could only say, “All the children of Gaza are my children… but these were my life.”

Commenting on the tragedy, Dr. al-Bursh described it as a devastating example of the suffering endured by Gaza’s medical staff. “Words fail to capture the scale of this pain,” he said. “In Gaza, it is not only doctors who are being targeted. The Israeli occupation persists in its crimes by obliterating entire families.”

Dr. Alaa is one of millions losing their loved ones every day as the brutal Israeli war on the Gaza Strip continues.