Newborn twins killed in Israeli strike in Gaza as father collects their birth certificates

Newborn twins were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip on Tuesday as their father went to collect their birth certificates, Anadolu Agency reports.

The two babies were born on Saturday in the city of Deir Al-Balah, but an Israeli strike on their apartment shattered the family’s joy of their newborns.

“I have just obtained the birth certificates for my newborn babies, Aysel and Asser,” their father, Mohammad Abu Al-Qumsan, told Anadolu as tears rolled down his cheeks.

“They were born on August 10. I was outside the house, finalising the paperwork, and then I got the call … I didn’t expect to find them all gone.”

Mohammad and his wife, Jumana Arafa, who had been displaced from northern Gaza, welcomed their twins into the world after a challenging caesarean delivery. Their hearts brimmed with joy, and the couple looked forward to the future with their two little ones.

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As he rushed out early Tuesday to collect the birth certificates for his children, he received a devastating phone call informing him that Israeli shelling had targeted the apartment where his family was staying.

With his heart racing and dread overwhelming him, Mohammad hurried to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, where he found his worst fears confirmed.

Collapsing in grief at the sight of his family gathered outside the morgue, the father realised that his wife and their newborn twins were among the victims.

“Aysel and Asser were the beginning and the end of my joy. My happiness was incomplete, and now it’s gone,” the bereaved father said.

Countless tragedies

Across the room, Jumana’s brother mourned his mother, Rim Jamal Al-Batraoui, 50, who was also killed in the attack.

As he held his mother’s body and gazed at his sister and her children, he tearfully asked, “What was their crime? Why did the Israeli army target them?”

The attack was part of Israel’s ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 40,000 people since 7 October, 2023.

The killing of the newborn twins was one of countless tragedies that have unfolded amid the Israeli war, leaving families like Mohammad’s with nothing but memories of the loved ones they lost.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since a 7 October, 2023 attack by Hamas.

Over ten months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on 6 May.

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