Eight children and two women were killed in the early hours of Saturday 15 May when Israeli airstrikes struck a three-storey house in the Al Shati ‘Beach’ refugee camp, to the west of Gaza City in the Gaza Strip. Various sources have reported that two mothers, who were sisters-in-law, died in the strike, with each losing four children, who were all first cousins aged between five and 14.
Multiple sources report several missiles striking the house, which belonged to Alaa Abu Hattab around 1.30 a.m, killing 10 people: (1) Yamen Abu Hatab, M, aged 5 / 6 (2) Bilal Abu Hatab, M, aged 9/10 (3) Youssef Abu Hatab, M, aged 10/11 (4) Mariyam Abu Hatab, F, aged 7 / 8 (5) Yasmine Hassan Hatab, F, aged 30/31 (6) Maha Abu Hatab (Al Hadidi), 34/36 (7) Abdul Rahman Al Hadidi, M, aged 7/8 (8) Suhaib Al Hadidi, M, aged 12/14 (9) Yahya Al Hadidi, M, aged 11 (10) Osama Al Hadidi, M, aged 5/6.
Yasmine Hatab and Maha Al Hadidi were sisters-in-law and their children were first cousins; the Al Hadidi children were visiting their cousins to celebrate the Eid festival. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), five of the children attended UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip.
Omar Al Hadidi, aged 5 months, survived the strike which killed his mother and four siblings, and was found amidst the rubble in his dead mother’s arms. Al Jazeera reported that 15 others, including the child, were injured in the strikes. Images provided by Anadolu Agency show at least two injured children.
Alaa Abu Hattab, the owner of the house, gave HRW this eyewitness account of the strike: “I left my house on foot at about 1:30 a.m. to go to some of the local shops that were open late during the run-up to Eid [holiday concluding the holy month of Ramadan] to buy toys and snacks for the kids for the Eid festival and to buy some food, as we were hungry. Before I left the house there was no warning that anything would happen to our house. We didn’t receive a phone call and there was no drone strike that they sometimes do to warn people that they will target a building. At least that would have scared the kids and they would have fled the house in time.”
Abu Hattab said that about 15 minutes after he had left, he heard “a very loud explosion that shook the whole area. I ran back towards the smoke and saw it was my house. It was all rubble. I felt like everything was revolving around me. I was in shock and I fainted. When I regained consciousness, I saw rescue workers looking for bodies under the rubble and recovering body parts. The attack had shredded the bodies. Other parts remained under the rubble because they could not find them. There were no militants in or near my house and no rockets or rocket launchers there. I still don’t know why they bombed my house and killed my wife and children and my sister and her children. What sin did they commit?”
The IDF have admitted to carrying out the strike, commenting that it had “attacked a number of Hamas terror organization senior officials, in an apartment used as terror infrastructure in the area of the Al Shati refugee camp.” (The New York Times reports).
Avichay Adraee, the spokesman for the Israeli army, said in a tweet that the “defense army targeted a number of Hamas officials inside an apartment used as a terrorist building in the al-Shati refugee camp,” adding that the incident was still “under examination”.
An IDF spokesman also said in a statement reported by Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom: “During the night, the IDF attacked a number of senior members of the terrorist organization Hamas in an apartment that serves as a terrorist infrastructure in the area of the Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip…The IDF takes precautions to minimize possible harm to civilians during its military activity.”
However, multiple eyewitness sources confirmed that no advance warning had been given that the strike was about to take place.