It began on Friday afternoon with a massive boom that residents say reverberated throughout the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
Alaa al-Najjar, a pediatric physician, was at work at the city’s Nasser Hospital when she heard her neighborhood south of the city had been hit in an Israeli airstrike. By the time she arrived, emergency workers were pulling out the corpses of her children, said Ali al-Najjar, her brother-in-law, who had also rushed to the scene.
“We had pulled out three charred bodies and were pulling out the fourth,” said Mr. al-Najjar. “She recognized them immediately.”
At least seven out of the Najjar family’s 10 children were killed, according to Gaza health officials and the family. Two remain missing, presumed dead under the rubble of their home, according to Ali al-Najjar and Mohammad al-Najjar, the nephew of Dr. Najjar’s husband.
The building next door had been storing car tires, said Ali al-Najjar, and they went up in flames in the blast. The fire quickly spread to the Najjars’ home, he said.
They were the latest casualties in a renewed round of fighting between Israel and Hamas after more than a year and a half of full-blown war. The Israeli military has escalated its airstrikes across the enclave in recent weeks and threatened a massive ground assault.
The New York Times provided the approximate time and coordinates of the strike to the Israeli military. In response, the military said it had “struck a number of suspects” in a structure near Israeli forces in Khan Younis but was still checking if “uninvolved civilians were harmed.”
There were believed to be only two survivors, the Gaza officials said. Hamdi al-Najjar, the doctor’s husband, remains in critical condition with severe brain injuries, while one of their children, Adam, was in moderate condition, said Ahmed al-Farra, the head of the pediatric care ward at Nasser Hospital. Dr. al-Farra backed the family’s account of the deaths of the children in the strike.
The deadliest war in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel’s battle against Hamas has killed more than 50,000 people in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but its published casualty lists include thousands of children.
Hamas began the war on Oct. 7, 2023, with a surprise attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw roughly 250 others taken back to Gaza as hostages. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has vowed that the latest offensive will finally lead to the defeat of Hamas, the militant group that has long run Gaza.
But critics — including many in Israel — say the war appears to set to drag on with no clear end in sight. In the meantime, the already immense civilian toll in Gaza is rising.
An investigation by The New York Times published last year found that Israel changed its rules of engagement at the start of the war, raising the number of civilians it deemed permissible to endanger in strikes on military targets.
The Israeli military has ordered many Palestinians living near Khan Younis to flee their homes or face potentially deadly Israeli attacks. Israeli officials say the measures show how committed they are to protecting Gaza’s civilians in a complex war.
The evacuation orders included the neighborhood of Qizan al-Najjar — a southern suburb of Khan Younis — where the Najjar family lived.
“The Khan Younis area is a dangerous war zone. Before beginning operations there, the IDF evacuated civilians from this area for their own safety,” the Israeli military said in a written response to a request by The New York Times for confirmation of the strike Friday, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
But the Najjars had stayed in their home nonetheless, feeling that they could not move their 10 children — including a baby — into a crowded tent camp without any services, said Ali al-Najjar.
Nor were they convinced that anywhere else in Khan Younis would be safer, he added. The Israeli military has occasionally struck areas designated as humanitarian zones, arguing that Palestinian militants were operating from within. Hamas fighters have also hid under residential neighborhoods in Gaza, storing their weapons in tunnels, houses, mosques and other places.
“At home, they had water, they had solar panels with electricity,” said Mr. al-Najjar.
Alaa al-Najjar had worked at Nasser Hospital for about a decade as a pediatrician, said Dr. al-Farra, who oversaw her work in the ward. He described her as a “kind person” who “treated the children with a blend of maternal care and professional expertise.”
Her husband is also a doctor. He occasionally wrote social media posts in which he appeared to praise Hamas and the Oct. 7 attacks. His family denied that he had any formal connection to the armed group.
Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.
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