GAZA CITY, Palestine

Newborn twins were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday as their father went to collect their birth certificates.

The two babies were born on Saturday in the city of Deir al-Balah, but an Israeli strike on their apartment shattered the family’s joy of their newborns.

“I have just obtained the birth certificates for my newborn babies Aysel and Asser,” their father Mohammad Abu al-Qumsan told Anadolu as tears rolled down his cheeks.

💢 Israeli attacks in Gaza kill 3-day-old Palestinian twins

Palestinian father learns that his wife, newborn twins and mother-in-law were killed in an Israeli airstrike while he was on his way to obtain their birth certificates pic.twitter.com/8ih58TAayN

— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) August 13, 2024

“They were born on August 10. I was outside the house, finalizing the paperwork, and then I got the call... I didn't expect to find them all gone.”

Mohammad and his wife, Jumana Arafa, who had been displaced from northern Gaza, welcomed their twins into the world after a challenging cesarean delivery. Their hearts brimmed with joy, and the couple looked forward to the future with their two little ones.

As he rushed out early Tuesday to collect the birth certificates for his children, he received a devastating phone call informing him that Israeli shelling had targeted the apartment where his family was staying.

With his heart racing and dread overwhelming him, Mohammad hurried to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where he found his worst fears confirmed.

Collapsing in grief at the sight of his family gathered outside the morgue, the father realized that his wife and their newborn twins were among the victims.

“Aysel and Asser were the beginning and the end of my joy. My happiness was incomplete, and now it's gone,” the bereaved father said.

Countless tragedies

Across the room, Jumana’s brother mourned his mother, Rim Jamal al-Batraoui, 50, who was also killed in the attack.

As he held his mother’s body and gazed at his sister and her children, he tearfully asked, “What was their crime? Why did the Israeli army target them?"

The attack was part of Israel’s ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 40,000 people since Oct. 7, 2023.

The killing of the newborn twins was one of countless tragedies that have unfolded amid the Israeli war, leaving families like Mohammad's with nothing but memories of the loved ones they lost.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an attack last October by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Over ten months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio and Yasin Gungor