On October 18th 2023, between five and seven members of the al-Halaw family, including at least three children and at least one woman were killed, and a large number of civilians were injured in an alleged airstrike by the Israeli military on the al-Halaw home, on Street 8 in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood near the University College in Gaza.

Initial reportage from the Palestinian Information Center and Shehab Agency stated that there were “Martyrs and wounded in the bombing…on a house for the al-Halaw family.” In three separate Facebook posts, relatives of the al-Halaw family mourned the loss of Umm al-Abd al-Halaw’s sons who died, confirming the names of four victims killed in the alleged airstrike – the brothers Abdel Haleem Bashir al-Halaw (40), Fajr Abdel Halim Bashir al-Halaw, Imad Bashir al-Halaw and Imad’s wife Yousry al-Halaw. They added that “a large number [of injured] were taken to hospital” with no specfic details or numbers of the injured mentioned

A day later, on October 19th 2023, Abdel Halim Bashir al-Halaw’s brother-in-law Hamade al-Halaw expressed his pain in a Facebook post and posted a picture of Abdel, a clean shaven middle-aged man smiling in a suit. The post also named Abdel’s son Mu’tasim Billah al-Halaw (11) as having been killed in the alleged strike, as well as Imad and Yousry’s unnamed children, further stating that “the rest of the family members are injured or missing, buried under the rubble, points to other injured family members, trapped under the rubble or missing altogether after their house in the Tal Al-Hawa area was bombed” – however the number of missing or injured have not been specified.

Airwars has matched the names of some of the civilians killed with the Palestinian Ministry of Health list of fatalities in Gaza released on October 26th, 2023, which explicitly mentions that names on the list are “victims of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip”. Therefore, coupled with the explicit attribution of the strike by one source to Israel, this incident has been graded as a “Likely Strike”, and the Civilian Harm grading is “Fair”.

Where sources identified the belligerent, all sources attributed the strikes to Israeli forces.

Due to the scale and urgency of Airwars’ assessment process, all images have been automatically uploaded to each assessment with the graphic filter applied to protect users. We have also included all images identified from the sources, which may also include any imagery of combatants.

The local time of the incident is unknown.