Gaza paediatrician Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar experienced unimaginable grief when an Israeli airstrike obliterated her home in Khan Younis, killing nine of her ten children just moments after she left for work. The attack came minutes after her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, had dropped her at Al Tahrir Hospital in the Nasser Medical Complex, only to return home and be critically injured in the blast. The couple’s children—Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Gubran, Eve, Revan, Sadin, Luqman, and Sidra—were killed, all under the age of 13. Their youngest son, Adam, survived with injuries and is currently being treated, while Dr. Hamdi remains in critical condition at the Jordanian field hospital.

The global medical community has expressed outrage and grief at the tragedy, with the coalition Doctors Against Genocide calling it “a deliberate act of unfathomable brutality.” Dr. Alaa, a respected physician and mother, was forced to identify the charred remains of her children in the very hospital where she works. Her personal loss has become a stark symbol of the broader humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, where medical personnel are increasingly being targeted. The coalition declared, “This is not just the killing of a family—this is a war on hope, healing, and humanity itself.”

Norwegian physician and long-time Gaza volunteer Dr. Mads Gilbert condemned the attack as part of a broader campaign of genocide and war crimes committed with impunity. “The systematic killing of healthcare workers, starvation of civilians, and the leveling of homes are not collateral damage—they are strategies of annihilation,” he said. Over the last 19 months, Israel has targeted countless medical professionals, with hospitals and ambulances becoming battlegrounds. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 12 highly skilled nurses and paramedics were killed in a single week, many alongside their families—an assault not just on individuals but on the very infrastructure of life-saving care in the besieged strip.