While saving lives of Gaza’s children, a Palestinian doctor receives remains of her nine children

GAZA, May 25 (YPA) – Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, a pediatrician at Nasser Hospital, was clutching her medical bag on a morning unlike any other, leaving behind 10 children within the walls of her home in Khan Yunis, the eldest of whom was no more than 12 years old.

Just minutes after arriving at the hospital, an Israeli missile struck their home, teeming with life, intertwined laughter, and the familiar childlike screams of Gaza’s homes, which excel at loving despite the crimes of genocide and siege.

Nine shrouds… and one child survives

After her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, drove her to the hospital, as he did every day, he hurried home. There, in a moment that lasted only a breath, an Israeli missile struck the house. The house disappeared, the walls vanished, and everything burned, even the children.

Nine of her children were killed in the bombing: Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Jibran, Eve, Rifan, Saydin, Luqman, and Sidra. They were all there, wrapped in small shrouds and clotted blood. Only Adam, the tenth child, remained wounded and fighting for his life, lying in intensive care next to his father, who was injured in the same raid.

She used to save children… Now she receives her children as martyrs

No one had the courage to tell Dr. Alaa about the disaster. The smell of burning that permeated the hospital, the sounds of ambulances, and the doctors’ feet rushing towards the emergency room were enough to instill fear in her heart.

It was only a matter of minutes until the bodies of her children began to arrive… burnt remains, burning braids, torn toys, the remains of small sandals… faces that had lost their features, nine small coffins, one after the other… nine children of her flesh and blood, of her laughter, her fatigue, and her long sleepless nights, came to her in an ambulance, not for her to rescue them, but for her to bid them farewell.

In an instant, Dr. Alaa was no longer just a doctor saving children’s lives but a mother cradling the bodies of her beloved children in the corridors of the same hospital. There, between the emergency rooms and the metallic cold of the morgue, she bid them farewell in a heavy silence that words could not contain.

“I had 10 children,” the doctor said in a trembling voice. “Only Adam survived. They were targeted by an Israeli missile while I was working in the hospital. Everything burned.”

What happened to Dr. Alaa happens every day to dozens of mothers in Gaza. A mother doesn’t choose to be just a source of compassion; she may be forced to be the one who washes the dead, the one who sees them off, and the one who buries them.

A grieving doctor… and medical staff being silently slaughtered

Alaa stood beside them, not screaming or crying, as if her voice had been lost under the shock. She hugged some shrouds, then sat on the ground, gasping silently. There was no language in that scene except silent tears and the heavy stench of death.

The tragedy of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar is not an isolated incident; it is the epitome of an ongoing massacre targeting medical personnel and their families, as well as schools, homes, and shelters.

In the Gaza Strip, doctors are no longer immune, nor are their children safe. Medical personnel work in impossible conditions, dressing wounds while they bleed internally, pulling children from death while their own children are killed in their homes.

The World Health Organization is silent. Human rights committees issue timid statements. The world watches from afar, as if children burning in their mothers’ arms are merely a painful cinematic scene.

In every corner of the besieged Gaza Strip, a similar story unfolds. Amid the impotence of the international community and its human rights organizations, the Israeli occupation continues its abuses, reassured by a global silence that resembles complicity.

 Numbers are no longer just statistics

The massacre of Dr. Alaa’s children represents Gaza’s intense pain. After their martyrdom, numbers no longer hold meaning. The number of martyred children in Gaza has surpassed 18,000. Names, dreams, and voices have been lost under the rubble. Faces that once filled the streets, schools, and homes have become numbers in reports the world never reads.

These are not just numbers of victims. They were the lives of walking angels, growing hopes, and dreams as big as the sky and the number of planets and stars. Today, they have become witnesses to Nazi crimes committed before the eyes of the world, amid shameful international silence and international inaction that befits nothing but shame.

The end of an entire world inside a mother’s heart

The massacre wasn’t a coordinate error. The children weren’t on the roof of a targeted house. They were asleep, in their beds, in their home, under a roof that no longer stands. But Alaa knows, and others like her know, that this isn’t just another massacre. It’s the end of an entire world inside the heart of a mother who was saving the lives of children.

YPA