On Tuesday, December 12th 2023, seven members of the Abu Libdeh family were reported missing. According to messages posted on social media, the family had been besieged in their home since December 4th, when the IDF entered the area of Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis. Three bodies – believed to be those of Duwaila Muhammad Abu Anza and her daughters Tasneem Hamdan Abu Libdeh and Shahad Hamdan Abu Libdeh – were found in the following weeks near the family’s home. Duwaila’s husband, Hamdan Muhammad Abu Libdeh, son, Islam Hamdan Abu Libdeh and daughters Razan Hamdan Abu Libdeh and Reem Hamdan Abu Libdeh, who was an associate trustee of the MSF UK Board, are thought to have been killed as well.

The fate of the Abu Libdeh family is known through a detailed testimony of the only surviving member, Hala Abu Libdeh, who was living in the United Kingdom as a Chevening Scholar at the time of the attack. In an interview with Palestine Deep Dive, Hala described her struggle to locate her family after losing contact with them on December 12th.

Close family friends confirmed contact with the Abu Libdeh family was lost this day through various social media posts. Trying to locate them, the user Isramudallal posted on Facebook: “The family of Hamdan Muhammad Abu Libda (Abu Islam) has been besieged in Bani Suhaila since December 4, the beginning of the ground invasion of the eastern region of Khan Yunis. Contact with them has been cut off since December 12”. The post included several contact numbers and a recent photo of Hamdan Muhammad Abu Libdeh.

Hala Abu Libdeh tried to reach out to her neighbours without a response. Local news outlets were also silent. “It was like this area just disappeared”. A few days later Hala managed to talk with an ICRC representative who confirmed they had tried to evacuate her family, but an Israeli tank was blocking the entrance.

45 days passed until Hala received news of her family. Social media posts where the Abu Libdeh family was declared “martyred” started circulating on January 26th. “Nearly more than a month after communication with them was cut off, the news of the martyrdom of my friend Shahad Hamdan Abu Lebda and all her family members was confirmed”, wrote Alaa Mahdi Qudeh in a Facebook post. “In the worst nightmares of my life, I did not imagine that I would lose my friend and lifelong companion in this way, and that there would no longer even be a grave or trace of them”.

Other social media users reported that a body had later been found in the Abu Libdeh family house, and buried in the Al-Awda School, where Hala and her sisters studied for secondary school.

A video shared on several Twitter/X accounts shows what is believed to be Shahad Hamdan’s body under sheets. According to testimonies received by Hala Abu Libdeh of people who had been at the scene, several bullets were found near the body, leading them to believe they had found a victim of execution.

Hala Abu Libdeh, who later received an extended version of this video, also corroborated that her family home was allegedly damaged both by airstrikes and tank artillery. According to comments made by her in the Palestine Deep Dive interview, a garden that surrounded the house and a high fence had “disappeared”. “Part of the fence was inside the house and there are no walls,” Hala said. “There’s also a possibility that they crushed my family under the tanks”.

“My friend had a very tender heart, a pure soul, and an innocent face. She was light-hearted and joking a lot. She was cheerful and loved to laugh and live, and she often liked to hug me and I did too. She always knew how much I hated the color grey, as she did. We always loved clarity, laughed and cried a lot together and were also afraid a lot together”, wrote Alaa Mahdi Kudaih in a condolence message posted on Facebook. Still uncertain of whether the body found was Shehad’s, she continued: “I still do not know the fate of my friend, and even if it is suspected that the characteristics of the hair of the first decomposing corpse may, in large part, belong to her, I do not accept this departure, I will not accept it, I cannot, I am weaker than all of this. I want to see my friend’s face, even if it’s one last time, take a final farewell look, kiss her one last time, hug her one last time, and tell her I love you one last time, even if all of this is from behind the phone screen. Is it too much for my heart to ask?”.

A week later, two more bodies were found in an open area of a factory near the Abu Libdeh family home. A close family friend was able to recognise the body of Duwaila Muhammad Abu Anza. It was assumed, based on the assessment of other relatives, that the second body found in the area was Tasneem Hamdan Abu Libdeh’s. This close family friend also recognised a bandage around Duwaila’s head.

Due to the still imminent danger in the area, these bodies could not be recovered until weeks later, when they were brought to Rafah. As the only close family member who had survived, Hala Abu Libdeh was faced with the terrible task of trying to recognise her loved ones through photos of their bodies sent from Gaza.

“I used to tell my sisters: ‘Don’t send me your photo if you are not smiling in the photo’. But I’ve never imagined that I will crop their smiles and send the photos to people to recognise who’s the body for from the teeth, because the bodies were decomposed to the point that even my relatives weren’t able to identify who’s the body for”.

Although the bodies of Hamdan Muhammad, Islam Hamdan, Razan Hamdan and Reem Hamdan have not been found, the devastation of the family home and months without any news of their whereabouts do not leave much room for hope. After the interview with Palestine Deep Dive, Hala mentioned to the same media outlet that some neighbours had managed to return to the house and had found clothes belonging to her brother covered in blood.

The Abu Libdeh family received numerous condolences through social media posts. On March 5th 2024, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) expressed their grief on their official website and Twitter accounts: “Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is devastated about the death of Reem Abu Lebdeh, an associate trustee of the MSF UK Board and former staff member in Gaza, whom we believe was killed sometime in December 2023”. According to MSF, “Reem worked as a physiotherapist for MSF in Gaza from 2018 until 2022, and last year was appointed as an associate trustee of the MSF UK Board”.

The user Isramudallal posted on Facebook: “Here Gaza is screaming and the world is silent…if only the world would be silent once and listen. It is not the only message.. and it is not the first time.. I often post an appeal, and either you send me the news of “we met them,” “they are fine,” “they are alive,” or “they were martyred,” O Israa 💔 These are the destinies of God…and the world’s desire to kill us”.

Hamdan Muhammad Abu Libdeh, who had studied Mathematics in Jordan and Duwaila Muhammad Abu Anza, who earned a degree in Arabic Literature from the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, emigrated to Saudi Arabia and worked as teachers there for nearly 20 years before returning to Gaza. According to Hala Abu Libdeh, Hamdan Muhammad struggled to find a teaching job in Gaza and more recently worked as a taxi driver.

Their children were also highly educated and dedicated professionals.

Reem Hamdan Abu Libdeh studied physiotherapy and went on to work for several international organisations including Mercy Corps and MSF, where she was an associate trustee of the board. She was “very keen to help people in the community” and had been involved in a project for MSF France that developed 3D-printed masks for face burns.

Islam Hamdan Abu Libdeh was a civil engineer who worked in Gaza for Action Against Hunger and the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics. He graduated with honours and enjoyed playing chess. Hala encouraged Islam to pursue a career in voice acting, which he had already been doing before October 7th.

Tasneem Hamdan Abu Libdeh studied medicine at Ain Shams University in Egypt, where she graduated with the highest honours. She was planning on becoming an cardiologist, and she had recently moved to Gaza to prepare for her specialisation.

Razan Hamdan Abu Libdeh was also a doctor, having earned her degree from Kasr Al Ainy Medical School at Cairo University. During her senior year of high school, she received a scholarship from the Leonard Education Foundation. Razan worked in different hospitals in Khan Younis. Noting the need for female gynaecologists in Gaza, she decided to pursue this speciality and continue her studies abroad, hoping to open a specialised centre upon her return. Before her death, she was planning to apply for a Chevening Scholarship.

According to her sister Hala, Shahad Hamdan Abu Libdeh was only 16 when she developed a device capable of generating electrical energy from the light of a candle. She went on to study Software Engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza, where she graduated with honours just in September 2023.

Where sources attributed the attack to a belligerent, all sources identified Israel as responsible.

The local time of the incident is unknown.