After a decade of trying and multiple rounds of IVF, Rania Abu Anza finally became pregnant. Tragically, her five-month-old twins were killed in an Israeli airstrike on her family’s home in the city of Rafah in Gaza, The Associated Press reported. Rania, her husband, and 11 other relatives were killed, with nine more missing under the rubble.
The explosion occurred after Rania had put her children to bed and was breastfeeding her son, Naeim. “I screamed for my children and my husband,” she said Sunday, as she sobbed and cradled a baby’s blanket to her chest. “They were all dead. Their father took them and left me behind.” Israeli airstrikes have regularly hit crowded family homes since the start of the war in Gaza, which Israel declared a safe zone in October but are now the next target of its devastating ground offensive.
Israel Avoids Harming Civilians
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on the Hamas militant group because it positions fighters, tunnels and rocket launchers in dense residential areas. However, the Israeli military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children. Without commenting on this attack, the Israeli military on Sunday said it “follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.” Of the 14 people killed in the Abu Anza house, six were children and four were women, the AP report said.
In addition to her husband and twins, Rania also lost a sister, a nephew, a pregnant cousin and other relatives. Rania and her husband, Wissam, both 29, spent a decade trying to get pregnant, according to the report. Two rounds of IVF had failed, but after a third, she learned she was pregnant early last year. The twins were born on Oct. 13. Less than a week before that on October 7, Hamas stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, including children and a newborn.
Read More: Children’s Deaths In Gaza: UNICEF Raises Alarm Over ‘Man-Made’ Tragedy Amid Israel-Hamas War
Over 30,000 Palestinians killed
Israel responded with one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history. The war has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Some 80 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes. The ministry said last month that more than 12,300 Palestinian children and young teens had been killed in the war. For the children who survive, the war has made life unbearable.
“Now, the child deaths we feared are here and are likely to rapidly increase unless the war ends and obstacles to humanitarian relief are immediately resolved,” UNICEF regional director Adele Khodr said in a statement Sunday. “The sense of helplessness and despair among parents and doctors in realizing that lifesaving aid, just a few kilometers away, is being kept out of reach, must be unbearable, but worse still are the anguished cries of those babies slowly perishing under the world’s gaze,” she added.
(With agency inputs)
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