Gaza pediatricians and mothers lost 9 out of 10 children after Israeli air strikes touched their homes, the hospital said

A pediatrician and mother from the age of 10 were mourning the death of nine small children after Israel’s air strikes crashed into their homes near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday, according to hospital officials.

Husband Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, also a doctor, was seriously injured and now in intensive care. The only child who is still alive is also injured, according to Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, Director General of the Gaza Ministry of Health managed by Hamas.

“This is the fact that our medical staff in Gaza survived. Words failed in describing pain,” Al-Bursh said in a statement on Friday night. “In Gaza, not only health care workers are the target – Israel’s aggression goes further, destroy the whole family.”

Nasser Medical Complex, where al-Najjar works as a child specialist at the Al-Tahrir Clinic, expressed his condolences in a statement, saying: “We are speechless, and our breath died limply in the face of the horror of this tragedy.”

When asked for a comment, Israel’s defense forces told ABC News, its plane on Friday “crashed into a number of suspects identified operating from a structure adjacent to IDF troops in the Khan Yunis area” and that “claims about the dangers of civilians who are not involved are being reviewed.”

“The Khan Yunis region is a dangerous war zone,” IDF added. “Before starting the operation there, IDF evacuated civilians from this area for their own safety.”

Ahmed Al-Farra, Head of Pediatri and Midwifery at the Tahrir Clinic at Nasser Medical Complex, confirmed the incident, told ABC News in a telephone interview on Saturday that Al-Najjar was working when he received news on Friday afternoon that the attack had hit Qizan An-Najjar, an area where his family lived, south of Khan Younis.

“He felt near his heart that something happened to his family,” Al-Farra said. “He went and walked and tried to run without transportation.”

“Unfortunately, he found that his house was completely destroyed,” he added.

Among the killed children, five are boys and four are girls, with the youngest is the seven-month-old girl and the oldest of a 12-year-old son, according to Al-Farra.

“They were completely burning,” he told ABC News.

One child who survived, the 11-year-old son of Al-Najjar, had to undergo two operations and remain in a critical condition in the hospital, according to Al-Farra. The father, Al-Najjar’s husband, was also still being treated in the hospital in a critical condition after undergoing surgery and may have amputated legs, Al-Farra said.

When asked whether there was humanitarian assistance to have reached the Nasser Medical Complex, one of the largest hospitals in Gaza, Al-Farra told ABC News that they still had not received anything because of the little assistance distributed so far this week had been stolen by armed gangs.

The World Food Program, the UN Food Assistance Branch, said that more than a dozen aid trucks were looted in South Gaza on Thursday night when 2 million people in the territory were struck by “extreme hunger and hunger without immediate action.”

The looting occurred only a few days after Israel surrendered to global pressure and relieved the 11 -week blockade of all supplies that entered Gaza neighbors, which according to the UN international assistance organization and others had caused widespread nutritional deficiencies and conditions that tend to cause hunger.

The aid block made in early March as the initial phase of a two -month ceasefire that ended between Israel and the ruler of Gaza militant, Hamas.

The Israeli government works with the US to regulate the distribution points of aid in South and Central Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday. But the plan, which will begin Monday, has faced criticism from an established aid organization that has been operating in Gaza for the past 19 months.

The war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, 2023, after Hamas fighters entered Israel and killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages. There are still 58 hostages detained by Hamas, 20 of which are considered alive. Hamas is believed to hold the body of four Americans.

The war had taken a big victim to Palestinians, with more than 53,000 dead in Gaza since the conflict began, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health managed by Hamas. While statistics do not distinguish between military and non-military victims, women and children are tens of thousands of this number, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

-ABC News’ Samy Zayara and Nasser Atta contributed to this report.