Saturday, May 31, 2025

One afternoon in Gaza, two family tragedies: the childhoods cut short by Israeli airstrikes. Relatives’ trauma over events on 23 May reflects a daily reality in Gaza: the killing and maiming of its youngest citizens

in Jerusalem and in Gaza

Fri 30 May 2025 11.54 EDT

At about 3pm last Friday, Dr Alaa al-Najjar, a paediatrician at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, received the charred remains of seven of her 10 children, killed in an Israeli airstrike. The bodies of two others were buried beneath the rubble.

A few miles away, 11-year-old Yaqeen Hammad, known as Gaza’s youngest social media influencer, was killed after a series of heavy Israeli airstrikes hit the house where she lived with her family. She was watering flowers in a tiny patch of greenery eked out of a displacement camp when she died. Her cousin, 16-year-old Eyad, was gravely wounded.

Even by the terrible standards of the Gaza conflict, the deaths had the power to shock. But they were also a reflection of a daily reality in the territory: the killing and maiming of its youngest citizens and the destruction of a generation.

According to local health officials, whose estimates have generally been found to be accurate by the global humanitarian community, more than 16,500 children have been killed in the 19 months since the war began – a figure almost 24 times higher than the number of children killed in Ukraine, where the population is 20 times bigger, since Russia’s invasion. The World Health Organization tally for child deaths stands at 15,613.

... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/may/30/gaza-two-family-tragedies-childhoods-cut-short-israeli-airstrikes

   [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

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