An Israeli strike on Gaza killed nine of a doctor’s 10 children while she was at work on Saturday, the territory’s health ministry said.
According to the Hamas-run authority, Alaa al-Najjar’s husband Hamdi and one surviving child were also seriously injured in the attack in Khan Younis.
She was reportedly working at the Nasser Hospital at the time of the air strike.
The BBC said the hospital confirmed the incident.
British doctor Graeme Groom, who works at the hospital, said he operated on the surviving child, Adam, 11, and expressed his shock at the incident in a video on Instagram.
Hamdi, also a doctor at the hospital, suffered severe chest and head wounds, including a skull fracture.
He had "no political and no military connections and doesn't seem to be prominent on social media", Groom said.
Adam sustained fragment injuries and several substantial lacerations.
Palestine Ministry of Health director Muneer Alboursh said on X the al-Najjars’ family house was hit minutes after Hamdi returned home after driving his wife to work.
Their dead children, two of whom remained trapped under the rubble, ranged in age from 7 months to 12 years old, Gaza’s Government Media Office said.
An Israeli military spokesman said the reports would be investigated.
A drone attack was carried out against several suspects near Israeli ground troops in Khan Younis, he said.
According to the health authority in Gaza, 79 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks yesterday alone.
• Earlier on Saturday, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said Israel had only authorised for Gaza what "amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required".
"Without rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access, more people will die."
Israel says about 300 trucks of aid have entered Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing since it lifted an 11-week blockade last week, but Guterres said so far only about a third of those truckloads had been transported from the crossing to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
Israel has allowed aid deliveries by the UN and other aid groups to briefly resume until a new United States-backed distribution model — run by the newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — is up and running by the end of the month.
The UN says the plan is not impartial or neutral, and that it will not be involved.
"We will not take part in any scheme that fails to respect international law and the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality," Guterres said. — TCA/Reuters
