Palestinian doctor in Gaza dies days after Israel killed nine of his children

A Palestinian doctor has died of his injuries nearly a week after an Israeli airstrike killed his nine children in southern Gaza, leaving only one surviving child.

Dr Hamdi Al-Najjar, a specialist in internal medicine, succumbed to wounds sustained during the 23 May Israeli bombing that levelled his family home in Khan Younis.

Medical and family sources confirmed his death late Saturday into Sunday, noting that only his son Adam, 11, remains alive and is currently receiving treatment at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

The strike on the Al-Najjar family home is one of the deadliest incidents involving a single household since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. It killed nine of the couple’s ten children, all of them minors, and critically injured both parents and their surviving son.

Dr Alaa Al-Najjar, a paediatrician and wife of the deceased, lived through the horror of seeing the bodies of her children pulled from the rubble one by one. Among the dead were Rakan (10), Eve (9), Jubran (8), Sadeen (7), Luqman (6), Ruslan (5), Reval (4), Yahya (12), and Sidra, who was just six months old.

According to eyewitnesses and Palestinian media, Dr Alaa stood at the site of the strike and bid farewell to her children as rescue workers retrieved their bodies. The only survivors, Adam and his father Hamdi, were thrown into the street by the force of the explosion. Adam remains in intensive care.

The targeted attack drew widespread grief and outrage across Palestinian communities. Human rights observers have condemned the strike as part of a pattern of genocidal collective punishment targeting civilians and medical professionals and their families.

The Al-Najjar family’s story has come to symbolise the scale of the unprecedented human loss in Gaza, where entire families have been wiped out in a single strike. Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, over 54,000 Palestinians - the vast majority of whom are civilians - have been killed.

Thousands of homes have been reduced to rubble, and hospitals are overwhelmed by the number of injured, many of whom are children.

The Israeli military has not issued a statement on the specific targeting of the Al-Najjar family home. Local sources report that the area struck was a residential zone with no military presence.

Al-Najjar’s funeral is expected to take place in Khan Younis.