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Airwars Assessment
On October 28, 2023, at around 11:30 p.m., the house of Ibrahim Lubad in Gaza City was bombed in an alleged Israeli airstrike. Eleven members of the Lubad family, who were sheltering there, including three women and three children, were killed, and a least two children were injured
According to testimony by a relative of the family, Manar, to B’Tselem field researcher Olfat al-Kurd, several generations of the Lubad family were killed in the incident. The 27-year-old mother explained that only her niece and nephew, three-year-old Maryam Lubad and nine-year-old Omar Lubad, survived the bombing.
In her heartfelt testimony, she explained how she was now raising her nine-year-old nephew and his sister after they lost the majority of their family. She recounted how, in the chaos that followed the incident, she was eventually able to find her deaf and mute niece, Maryam. The young girl had needed surgery after she had fractured her leg, broken a bone in her hand, and needed an implant to splint her other leg that had been broken in the bombing.
As described in the post, before the incident, the family had been travelling from place to place seeking shelter from bombing, moving from western Gaza to the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza. The family had finally sought refuge at her uncle Ibrahim Lubad’s house, which was bombed a short time after he had entered it on the night of October 28.
40-year-old Ibrahim Ahmad Lubad, who was a doctor at the Al-Shifa Hospital, was killed along with his brother and sister-in-law, 65-year-old Muhammad Ahmad Lubad and 56-year-old Suzan Khalil Lubad.
Other family members killed in the incident were the sons of Muhammad and Suzan, 35-year-old Ahmad Muhammad Lubad and 33-year-old Yusef Muhammad Lubad; Yusef’s wife, 29-year-old Ghadah Lubad, and their nine-year-old son, Hamzah Lubad – Omar’s twin.
32-year-old Mahmoud Muhammad Lubad, Ibrahim’s brother, was also killed in the incident along with his wife, 29-year-old Walaa Lubad, and their infant son, Ousamah Mahmoud Lubad. Finally, 17-year-old Malek Lubad, the teenage cousin of Manar Lubad-Miqdas, was also killed in the incident.
Where possible, the names of the victims have been matched with the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH) lists, which include national ID numbers. Since October 26, 2023, the MoH has released a number of lists, along with an additional list of medical professionals, which was released on September 17, 2024. Airwars is matching individuals to the first list where their name appeared. In regard to this incident, names are matched to the second “Palestinian Ministry of Health List of Fatalities in Gaza”, which was released on January 7, 2024.
Following the news of their passing, friends and family took to social media to mourn the loss of their loved ones. Some shared the epitaph, “And never think that those who have been killed in the cause of Allah are dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, and they are provided for,” whilst others shared other religious messages to lament the loss of their family members and friends.
Where sources identified a belligerent, all sources attributed the strike to Israeli forces.