Mohamed Abu al-Qumsan just received his son’s birth certificates newborn twins when he learned that they had died, along with his wife and her mother during an Israeli attack on the Gaza apartment where they were taking refuge.

He waved the laminated documents that minutes earlier had given him a rare moment of joy in the besieged Palestinian enclave, as a man hugged him and Mohamed wept in the morgue where their bodies were taken.

“My wife, my two children and my mother-in-law are missing. “They told me it was a shell from a tank hitting the apartment they were in, in the building where they evicted us,” said Abu al-Qumsan, 31, recalling the devastating phone call from area residents.

He and other people took his son and daughter Asser and Aysel, wrapped in white shrouds, a common sight in the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s ground and air campaign has forced hundreds of thousands of people to periodically seek refuge.

A man prayed as the bodies were placed in the back of a car and a crowd gathered to watch from the balcony of one of Gaza’s overcrowded emergency rooms, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah, in the central coastal strip.

“Today history records that the occupation army It affects newborn babies as young as four days old. “The twins are together with their mother and grandmother,” said hospital doctor Jalil al-Dakran.

Israel says it is doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using human shields, but the militants deny the charges.

An Iran-backed Palestinian militant group sparked the conflict with a cross-border raid into Israel on October 7 that Israel says killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages.