Nineteen members of the Dawas family were killed and an unknown number of others were injured when their two-story family home on Al-Shaima Street, west of Abbas Kilani roundabout in Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza Strip, was reportedly bombed by an Israeli aircraft on Saturday, October 14, 2023. The Ministry of the Interior in Gaza reported the bombing of the Dawas family home on October 14, and stated that the family were buried under rubble and civil defense and ambulance crews were working to rescue them.
Arabi21 reported that there were dozens killed and injured in the incident. A Facebook post by a family member Ramzi Dawas listed the names of seven identified killed victims (four from a previous incident) noting that “there are still martyrs from the family, as many as 15 martyrs whose names are not mentioned under the dots” and called for help in retrieving the bodies from the rubble. Due to this post, the exact address of the incident is likely house Lahia, entrance of Ezba Dawas, west of Abbas Kilani roundabout, Al Shaima Street.
Across all sources, 14 victims were named/identified and reported as killed.
The victims were named by their family members as Maher Dawas (56) and his sons Youssef Maher Dawas (20), Fadi Maher Dawas (30), Abdel Rahman Maher Dawas (16) and Obada Maher Dawas. A woman identified as the wife of Yasser Dawas, her sons Sharaf Yasser Dawas (13) and Muhammad Yasser Dawas (11), and her daughters Malak Yasser Dawas (20) and Shahid Yasser Dawas (16), were all killed. Maher’s sister Jamila Youssef Dawas, also known as Umm Musa, was also killed as well as a set of sisters called Lamya Dawas and Yasmin Dawas. A woman named Noha Abdel Aziz Dawas (44) was also killed.
Many people and organisations paid tribute to Youssef Maher Dawas, a young poet, writer, and student studying to be a psychoanalyst. He had published an essay with the collective, We Are Not Numbers, in January 2023 called “Who will pay for the 20 years we lost?”, recounting the destruction of his family’s orchard in May 2022 by an alleged Israeli missile strike and how the loss of the orchard, to quote from the essay, “destroyed an important piece of our past. Our family’s history. Our heritage.” Youssef was also a contributing writer in Palestine Deep Dive and the Palestine Chronicle where his last article had been titled “Kidney Transplant and Rebirth: A Palestinian Love Story”. Youssef’s colleagues at WANN described him as a joyful, funny, kind and sensitive person, with a radiant smile and a love of people. Friends reported that he was nicknamed “Joe”, and loved photography, nature, his cats and the author, Ahlam Mosteghanemi. Another friend, Mahmoud Yazgy, said he was dedicated and was quick to take initiative. His mentor, Kate Casa, reported that he was motivated and open-minded and “was anxious to tell his stories so that we in the West could better understand their lives in Gaza”. One colleague, Ahmed Dremly, reported that Youssef asked him, in the first days of the conflict, to join him “to go document all of the massacres that happened in Gaza” and he had turned down the offer.
The Palestine Chronicle posted a tribute to Youssef including a short video of him talking about how he wants to visit places in Palestine more than Paris or the Maldives.
The Tamer Institute for Community Education made a tribute to Youssef, who was a member of the youth literary teams “Yar’at” and “Voices from Palestine”, saying that “he shared his deep love for life in expressing himself even amid the most challenging of circumstances.” Jesse Boylan, writing in John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal, reported that Youssef was interested in politics, economics and video games and that he was learning to play the guitar.
Maher and Jamila’s brother Jaser Dawwas claimed the incident took place without warning.
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.
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 incident occured in the morning.
