Geolocation
Airwars assessment
On October 15th 2023, five members of the Abu Musa family, including two children, a woman, and two men, were reportedly killed and at least two children from the same family and a man were reportedly injured by an alleged Israeli bombing in the Al Amal neighbourhood in Khan Yunis, located in the South of the Gaza Strip.
The incident occurred at the home of Doctor Hamid Abu Musa, who was working at Nasser Hospital at the time of the strike.
The Abu Musa family official page outlines the death of child Yousef Mohammed Abu Musa, alongside two of his cousins, Hamid Jaser Abu Musa and child Abd Al Rahman Jaser Abu Musa, as well as their mother, Hiba Al Hadoun.
A story published by the BBC explained that when their home was hit, Yousef and his two older siblings, Jury, 13 years old, and Hamid, 9 years old, were watching cartoons on television thanks to solar panels previously installed by their father to compensate with power shortages in Gaza. Yousef was seven years old when he was killed, after the roof of their house collapsed, according to the BBC report. Jury and Hamid both survived the attack with injuries.
Yousef’s father is described by the BBC as a radiographer at the Nasser hospital in the city of Khan Younis, who was working a 24-hour shift when “his wife, Rawan, entered, screaming in search for their youngest son”. Videos were widely circulated of Rawan calling for her “handsome and curly-haired son”. According to a Facebook post, Doctor Hamid and his wife searched emergency and recovery rooms for three hours, before finding Yousef in the morgue.
“The last time I saw Yusof alive was when he ran to hug me on the doorstep of our home, just before I left for work,” Mohamed told the BBC. “He kissed me and said goodbye after I had given him some biscuits and bananas. He wanted to be a doctor, maybe because he always saw me going to hospital for work.”
Further Facebook posts identify Hani Fathi Abu Masa as a family member of the Abu Musa, also killed in the incident. However, Abu Musa’s Facebook posts make his relation to the family unclear.
An image posted by mohannadalkhteeb on Instagram also identified “a number of injuries” with images of two injured children and an injured man. Yousef’s mother, Rawan, had been able to find nine-year old Hamid after the strike, while rescue teams had helped pull 13-year old Jury out of the rubble. Jury had suffered head injuries but her parents told the BBC her health was “improving”.
All of the sources that reported on the incident attributed the strike to Israeli forces.
Where possible, Airwars has matched names with the Palestinian Ministry of Health list of nearly 7000 victims’ names and ID numbers released on October 26th.
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.
The victims were named as:
Family members (7)
Summary
Sources (13) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (11) [ collapse]
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Source: Wafa Mahmoud Abu Musa -
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Source: Mohammed Al-hanafi -
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Source: Social Media Facebook -
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Source: Social Media Facebook -
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Source: Social Media Facebook -
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Source: Social Media Facebook -
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Source: Social Media Facebook -
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Source: ETC facebook -
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Source: ETC facebook -
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Source: Abu Musa family official page -
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Source: BBC News
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the neighbourhood of Al Amal (الأمل), within the Gaza strip (قِطَاعُ غَزَّةَ), for which the generic coordinates are: 31.354810, 34.297943. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.