- The mother was among three killed in a strike on the Maghazi refugee camp
Heart-wrenching pictures show the tragic moment a Palestinian ambulance worker realised the body he was transporting was his own mother, killed by an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza.
‘Oh God, I swear – she’s my mother! I didn’t know it was her!’ Abed Bardini sobbed as he leaned over his mother, Samira, cradling her head in his arms.
Bardini had unknowingly sat in the ambulance beside her body, wrapped in a white sheet stained dark with blood, as the vehicle bounced across broken roads for about 1.2 miles (2km) toward Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
He made the horrific discovery after the bloody sheet covering her body was lifted at the hospital, where fellow Red Crescent medics tried desperately to console him.
Samira was among three people who were killed in the Israeli strike on a car in Maghazi refugee camp on Wednesday, according to Palestinian health officials and journalists, while at least 10 were left wounded.
Health officials at the hospital said two of the dead were men sitting in the vehicle, and the blast had fatally injured 61-year-old Samira Bardini as she stood nearby.
Abed Bardini was in one of two ambulances dispatched to the scene.
Back at the hospital, he unloaded the stretcher with practiced professionalism, squinting into the late afternoon sun as he wheeled the body across the hospital courtyard.
Inside, medical staff pulled back the blanket to check for signs of life, and Bardini’s strength collapsed.
Later, his tears exhausted, he sat in the morgue beside Samira’s body with his head in his hands, comforted by his Red Crescent colleagues.
They held a funeral prayer over her body in the parking lot, then Bardini personally helped carry the body into an ambulance for burial.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.
Israel says it carries out precise strikes in Gaza targeting Palestinian terrorists and tries to avoid harming civilians. But the strikes often kill women and children.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted around 250 in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war.
Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Wednesday that 102 deaths were recorded over the past 24 hours.
