Father in intensive care after nine children killed in Israeli strike on Gaza

By Hatem Khaled and Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA/CAIRO (Reuters) -The father of nine children killed in an Israeli military strike in Gaza over the weekend remains in intensive care, said a doctor on Sunday at the hospital treating him.

Hamdi Al-Najjar, himself a doctor, was at home in Khan Younis with his 10 children when an Israeli air strike occurred, killing all but one of them. He was rushed to the nearby Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza where he is being treated for his injuries.

Abdul Aziz Al-Farra, a thoracic surgeon, said Najjar had undergone two operations to stop bleeding in his abdomen and chest and that he sustained other wounds including to his head.

"May God heal him and help him," Farra said, speaking by the bedside of an intubated and heavily bandaged Najjar.

The Israeli military has confirmed it conducted an air strike on Khan Younis on Friday but said it was targeting suspects in a structure that was close to Israeli soldiers.

The military is looking into claims that "uninvolved civilians" were killed, it said, adding that the military had evacuated civilians from the area before the operation began.

According to medical officials in Gaza, the nine children were aged between one and 12 years old. The child that survived, a boy, is in a serious but stable condition, the hospital has said.

Najjar's wife, Alaa, also a doctor, was not at home at the time of the strike. She was treating Palestinians injured in Israel's more than 20-month war in Gaza against Hamas in the same hospital where her husband and son are receiving care.

"She went to her house and saw her children burned, may God help her," said Tahani Yahya Al-Najjar of her sister-in-law.

"With everything we are going through only God gives us strength."

Tahani visited her brother in hospital on Sunday, whispering to him that she was there: "You are okay, this will pass."

On Saturday, Ali Al-Najjar said that he rushed to his brother’s house after the strike, which had sparked a fire that threatened to collapse the home, and searched through the rubble. "We started pulling out charred bodies," he said.

In its statement about the air strike, the Israeli military said Khan Younis was a "dangerous war zone".

Practically all of Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians have been displaced after more than 20 months of war.

The war erupted when Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, killing around 1,200, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 more.

The retaliatory campaign, that Israel has said is aimed at uprooting Hamas and securing the release of the hostages, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, Gazan health officials say.

Most of them are civilians, including more than 16,500 children under the age of 18, according to Gaza's health ministry.

(Reporting by Hatem Khaled in Gaza and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo; Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Tel Aviv; Writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Alexander Cornwell; Editing by David Holmes)