During the night of Saturday, 21st of October 2023, an airstrike allegedly conducted by the Israeli military killed a 91-year old Palestinian woman, Alia Mohammad Ibrahim Jarghoun, alongside her three-year old grandchild Noor Al-Din Hamadeh Ahmad Jarghoun, and injured at least six civilians, including a woman and at least two children, and up to dozens of civilians, in the Jarghoun family home, situated in the Sheikh Nasser/Ma’an area in eastern Khan Yunis, the Gaza Strip.
The Ministry of the Interior in Gaza and multiple local news sources reported on the event, corroborating the death of Alia Jarghoun and Nour Hamada Jarghoun and referencing the further six civilians injured by the airstrike. A family member Muhammad Refaat Jarghoun wrote on Facebook that “at the beginning of the night, a heinous crime was committed against my family, the Jargun family, which resulted in the martyrdom of a woman and an unarmed child, and many injuries.” Safa news reported that a woman and a girl were recovered from under the rubble of the Hargun family’s house, but there is no further information whether they were alive or dead.
There are multiple video evidence of this violence: a Twitter/X user @mohammed_jbour posted a harrowing video showing the father identifying the body of his deceased child, Nour Jarghoun, and collapsing at the sight of his child in the makeshift mortuary, covering his eyes and having to be supported and pulled out by another individual.
MsdrNews posted a video on Facebook showing the moments an ambulance arrived with hospital staff waiting to treat the wounded. An infant is taken out of the ambulance in the arms of a paramedic – it is unclear if the child is alive, and an adult man with a torn vest makes his way inside the hospital. Two young children are ushered into the hospital with visible, bloody wounds to their bodies and are followed by a large number of men, presumably reporters and/or family members.
A day later, on Sunday, October 22st, 2023, Jarghon posted on Facebook calling for prayers at the Indonesian Mosque in Central Gaza to mourn the loss of their family members Alia Jarghoun and Nour Hamada Jarghoun.
Alia Jarghoun’s funeral took place on the Sunday October 22st, 2023. She was remembered by relatives in a facebook post by Omammar2020 as the “Mother of the martyr Hassan Jarghoun, the first martyr in the Stone Intifada 1987, and grandmother of the martyr Zaher Jarghoun 2011”.
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 during the night.
