Mother and 6 Children Killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

JERUSALEM — Hala Khattab’s home in the city of Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip had been full of children — six of them. There was her oldest son, Hussein, 15; her 9-year-old quadruplets, Kinan, Hamman, Lujain, and Sibal; and her baby girl, Wakeen.

Early on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike demolished the family’s second-floor apartment, killing Khattab, a 36-year-old teacher, and all of her children, her family said. Their father, Ashraf Attar, narrowly escaped with his life.

“We collected the scattered body parts of the children,” said Khattab’s brother, Ahmad Khattab, a nurse who lives nearby and helped search the rubble. Ahmad Khattab added, “There is no explanation” for the strike on the family.

The Israeli military confirmed an attack in Deir al-Balah on Sunday morning, saying that its air force had carried out a precision strike on someone who had “directed attacks” on its troops throughout the war. The military said it had launched the strike after warning civilians Friday to temporarily evacuate the area.

The military did not name the target of the strike, and it remained unclear if Israeli commanders believed he had lived in the Khattab family’s apartment or another location.

The children’s father is also a nurse, not a militant, said Ahmad Khattab, 35. The strike demolished all the exterior walls of the family’s apartment in a three-story building, he said. The blast threw Attar from the apartment, leaving him with a broken arm and burned legs, the brother said.

The building is in an area that has never been ordered to evacuate during 10 months of war, and the family felt safe there, he said. The family did not receive an evacuation order or a warning call from the Israeli military just before the strike, either, Ahmad Khattab said.

The strike came a day before Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel at what Blinken called “a decisive moment” for diplomatic negotiations aimed at reaching a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have also been killed in the war, according to Gaza health authorities, and it has taken an exceptional toll on children, who have been caught in the middle.

Dr. Khalil al-Dagran, the director of Al-Aqsa Hospital, said that his hospital received the bodies of Hala Khattab and her six children on Sunday morning.

“What did these children do?” Mohammed Khattab, the children’s grandfather, said in a video interview with the Reuters news agency.

Ahmad Khattab said the family had buried the six children in one grave.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.