In a tragic incident that has further intensified the already dire situation in the Israel-Palestine war, a set of four-day-old twins have died in Gaza while their father, Mohammad Abu Al Qumsan, left their Deir al-Balah home to register their birth.
Following the Israeli strike that killed the newborn twins, Abu Al Qumsan stated that his wife (Joumana Arafa), a pharmacist had given birth to the babies through cesarean section four days before the incident and had even gone on to celebrate the birth of her children on Facebook and called them ‘miracles.’
“I don’t know what happened,” Abu Al Qumsan told the press in a sober tone while at the hospital where the bodies were taken, holding the twins’ birth certificates. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.”
The twins: a boy named Asser and his sister, Ayssel, were not the only casualties in the airstrike. The same attack also claimed the life of their mother and the twins’ grandmother. This is only one of the horrendous stories to have been recorded since the start of the deadly conflict.
Near the southern city of Khan Younis, a similar airstrike killed all the members of a family including five siblings aged five to twelve with the exclusion of a three-month old baby who goes by the name Reem Abu Hayyah.
“There is no one left except this baby,” said Reem’s aunt, Soad Abu Hayyah. “Since this morning, we have been trying to feed her formula, but she does not accept it, because she is used to her mother’s milk.”
The Health ministry in Gaza recently mentioned that 115 newborns had been killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023, and more than 34,000 people have lost their lives as at April, 2024.
The Overall Impact of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
According to the United Nations (UN) Agency for Palestinian Refugees, at least 1.9 million people (equivalent to 9 out of 10) have been displaced and 2.2 million exposed to the risk of famine and diseases since the start of the conflict in the Gaza Strip.
The UN’s children's agency, UNICEF, warned that the ongoing war “continues to inflict horrors on thousands of children,” following an estimated 17,000 displaced children in Gaza. Mohammad Abu Al Qumsan, the father of the twins is one of the hundreds of thousands who can't properly mourn the loss of members of their nuclear and extended households as a result of the escalating Israel-Palestine war.
Essentially, the loss of these newborns reminds the world of the huge number of innocent lives caught in the crossfire of the Israel-Palestine war. The ongoing conflict, which has seen repeated cycles of violence, continues to claim lives, with children and civilians bearing the most brunt of the attacks.