4-Day-Old Gaza Twins Killed by Israeli Strike While Dad Went to Get Birth Certificates

The twins were killed alongside their mother, who called their birth “a miracle” on Facebook shortly before the Israeli airstrike.

By Kylie Cheung  |  August 14, 2024 | 12:05pm
Photos: Screenshot/AP Latest Gaza
4-Day-Old Gaza Twins Killed by Israeli Strike While Dad Went to Get Birth Certificates

On Monday evening, Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan left his home in Deir al Balah in Gaza to obtain birth certificates for his four-day-old twins, a boy named Asser and a girl named Ayssel. His wife, Joumana Arafa, gave birth by c-section and called their birth “a miracle” in a series of excited Facebook comments; the birth, after all, came months after she and Abuel-Qomasan were ordered to evacuate their home in Gaza City at the onset of Israel’s war on Gaza. But while Abuel-Qomasan was getting the birth certificates, he received a phone call that an Israeli airstrike had killed Asser, Ayssel, his wife, and the twins’ maternal grandmother.

“I don’t know what happened. I am told it was a shell that hit the house,” Abuel-Qomasan told the Associated Press. “I didn’t even have the time to celebrate them.”

Video of Abuel-Qomasan mourning his wife and children, all while holding their freshly printed birth certificates, has since been widely shared across social media, as have Joumana Arafa’s recent Facebook comments. “I feel like it was a miracle … everything is going well & sure I will always need your support … I will share you their pics,” she wrote in one comment. In others, she thanked loved ones for their congratulations.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israeli attacks have killed at least 115 newborns since October, when Israel began this iteration of its genocidal campaign against Palestinians following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Israel has since killed around 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry’s latest estimates, but this is likely a significant undercount. In January, the United Nations estimated that two mothers in Gaza were killed every hour by Israeli attacks and that, at that point, 70% of the dead were women and children.

Stories like Abuel-Qomasan’s are a painful, recurring feature of the war, which our taxes and U.S.-made weapons continue to facilitate. On Friday, the U.S. released $3.5 billion to Israel to buy more weapons, reportedly as the country anticipates an attack from Iran. And on Monday, President Biden approved a $20 billion arms sale to Israel, for similar reasons. But delivery dates on these weapons range from 2026 to 2029.

Over the weekend, Israeli forces attacked and killed over 100 displaced Palestinians taking refuge at al-Tabin school with a U.S.-made bomb. “Nobody was able to recognize the full body of their beloved ones,” Palestinian journalist Shrouq Aila said from Deir al Balah, near the school.

At the same time Abuel-Qomasan lost his family, an Israeli strike in Khan Younis on Monday killed the entire immediate family of a three-month-old baby, including her parents and five siblings aged five to 12, the Guardian reports. “There is no one left except this baby,” the baby’s aunt, Soad Abu Hayyah, told the outlet. “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.”

One woman in Gaza, Rania Abu Anza, tried for 10 years to have children with IVF; she finally became pregnant and gave birth in October at the beginning of the war. In March, an Israeli airstrike killed her months-old twins, her husband, and 11 other members of her family while 35 of them sheltered in a single home after being displaced by Israeli attacks.

“I screamed for my children and my husband. They were all dead. I didn’t get enough of them. I swear I didn’t get enough of them,” Rania told the AP at the time. “Who will call me mother now? … My heart is gone,” she told Al Arabiya News. Holding her children’s dead bodies, she asked, “What was their fault? What did a baby like this do?”

The organization Defense for Children estimated last month that at least 16,000 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed by Israeli attacks since October. The killing of Abuel-Qomasan’s newborn twins comes as humanitarian groups raise how Israel’s war on Gaza has carried particular harm for children including infants: In December, the Washington Post reported that, after doctors at Gaza’s al-Nasr Hospital were forced to flee on threat of death, they returned to find the decomposing corpses of several premature babies who needed ventilators, left for dead by Israeli forces who invaded the hospital. That same month, a World Health Organization official called the crisis, which saw one Palestinian child in Gaza killed every 10 minutes, “humanity’s darkest hour.”

While the U.S. continues to send money and weapons to Israel, and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris dodges questions and protesters about her position on Gaza, maternal and infant mortality in Gaza—under heart-wrenching circumstances like this—will continue to surge.

 
Join the discussion...