Newborn Twins Killed in Gaza While Father Went to Register Birth

Two newborn twins were killed in Gaza while their father was at a local government office to register their births.

Asser, a boy, and Ayssel, a girl, were only four days old when their father Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan went to collect their birth certificates.

While he was away, his neighbors called to tell him that their house in Deir al Balah had been bombed.

His wife and the twins’ grandmother also died in the Israeli airstrike.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “They told me it was a grenade that hit the house.”

“I didn’t even have time to celebrate them,” he added.

According to the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry, 115 children were born and killed during the war.

According to the AP news agency, the family had followed orders to evacuate Gaza City in the first weeks of the war between Israel and Gaza, seeking refuge in the central area of ​​the Strip, as ordered by the Israeli army.

The BBC has asked the Israeli military for comment on the attack and is awaiting a response.

Israel He says he tries to avoid harming civilians and attributes their deaths to Hamas’ actions in densely populated residential areas, including using civilian buildings as shelters.

But officials rarely comment on individual strikes.

Several such shelters in Gaza have been attacked in recent weeks.

Saturday, a Israeli airstrike on school building The operation to protect displaced Palestinians in Gaza City has left more than 70 people dead, a hospital director told the BBC.

An Israeli military spokesman claimed that the school “served as an active military facility of Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” which Hamas denied.

Israel has disputed the death toll, but the BBC has not been able to independently verify the figures provided by either side.

On October 7, in an attack on Israel, Hamas-led gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage in Gaza.

That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive against Gaza and began the current war.

According to Gaza’s Hamas-led Health Ministry, more than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli campaign.