Reem Abu Haya, a Palestinian girl who survived an Israeli strike that killed her entire family, cries at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza August 13, 2024 [Mohammed Salem/Reuters]
Deir el-Balah, August 14 (RHC)-- Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip continues to destroy families, leaving children without their parents and parents without children, says a new report.
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that the regime’s relentless bombardment of the besieged Palestinian territory “has wiped out extended families. It has left parents without children and children without parents, brothers or sisters.” Some of the sole survivors are so young they will have no memory of those they lost, the report said.
In an airstrike on Monday near the southern city of Khan Younis, ten members of a family were killed when their house was destroyed. The dead included the parents of the family and five siblings, ranging in age from 5 to 12.
Reem Abu Hayyah, just three months old, was the only member of her family to survive the airstrike, according to the report. “There is no one left except this baby,” said her aunt, Soad Abu Hayyah. “Since this morning, we have been trying to feed her formula, but she does not accept it, because she is used to her mother’s milk.”
A few kilometers to the north, the mother of a family and her twin babies — just four days old — were killed in another strike.
The regime’s bloodiest-ever campaign in Gaza has left so many orphans – so many that local doctors employ an acronym when registering them – "WCNSF" or “wounded child, no surviving family.”
The United Nations estimated in February that some 17,000 children in Gaza are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since early October.