‘Our children are getting killed’: the human cost of Israel-Gaza violence

Lying in Gaza’s main hospital and unconscious for most of the night, the patient was unsure who from his family was still alive.

Muhammad al-Masri, 22, was in front of his house on Monday night, just before breaking his fast for Ramadan. “I heard the sound of a bombardment coming towards us from the frontier,” he said.

He started running, but it was too late. An explosion hit his body, fracturing his right arm. “There’s a piece of shrapnel in my right eye,” he said, “I cannot see with it”.

Asleep or in surgery at Shifa hospital for the past 24 hours, all al-Masri says he knows is that at least one brother, a sister and a cousin were also wounded, as they were taken to hospital in the same car. At the time of the interview, he was not sure about their condition.

Al-Masri is from the town of Beit Hanoun, near the Israeli frontier. Seven members of the same family, including three children, died there overnight, residents said.

Following weeks of intense violence in Jerusalem, Hamas, the Islamist group that rules inside Gaza, fired a barrage of rockets towards Jerusalem on Monday evening. Since then, it has launched hundreds more at Israeli towns nearby, and Israel has conducted dozens of airstrikes, including hits on residential buildings.

In total, 28 Palestinians, including 10 children, have died, according to the enclave’s health ministry, and two Israeli women died and scores other were wounded inside Israel, where air sirens blared in nearby towns almost continuously.

In the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, an empty school was bombed. Local media reported four members of the same family, including an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old, were wounded by shrapnel.

A medic for United Hatzalah, a volunteer-based emergency medical services agency, said he treated a woman in her 70s after her home in the city was hit. “The woman was in critical condition,” he said.

Across the Gaza Strip, families spent a full night and day shuddering inside.

Souad, 30, said it was terrifying. “We couldn’t sleep,” said Souad, who asked to give only her first name. “The children do not know what is happening.”

Abdel-Hamid Hamad said his nephew Hussein, 11, was killed on Monday in what residents said was an Israeli airstrike. He told Reuters the boy was collecting wood when he was hit.

“Gaza has had enough, and nothing makes a difference now. Our children are getting killed. What should we do?” Hamad told Reuters.

In Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon, an Israeli woman treated for injuries after her apartment was hit by a Palestinian rocket recalled moments of panic.

An air conditioner fell on her and one of her children during the night and a bathroom door fell on her husband’s head, the woman told Channel 13, which did not give her name.