Shortly before 5:09 PM on Thursday, October 19th, 2023, two 10-year-old girls were killed and a number of civilians were injured in an alleged Israeli airstrike on the residential house of the Al-Houm family, located in Jabalia camp, Block 2, in the northern Gaza Strip.
According to the Palestinian news agency, Safa, several people were injured and killed in the incident. Despite the unknown number of injuries, Ali Alhoom’s Facebook post has helped to identify the names of the two 10-year-old girls who were killed in the strike: Reema Mounir Ali Al-Houm (al-Hawwam) and Liyan Abdul Jawad Ali Al-Houm (al-Hawwam).
In a Facebook post, Eman Mohamed expressed her condolences after learning of her cousin’s daughter’s death: “May God give patience to her mother’s heart and strengthen her heart.” Eman and a number of other sources reported than Liyan’s father had been killed in 2014 and that she had now “joined her father in heaven”.
Similarly, Abeer Aldaur has shared a photograph of Layan Abdel Jawad al-Houm smiling into a camera with her hands raised in the shape of a heart.
Mahmoud Abu Salama posted a video on his Facebook page documenting the rescue effort from the second floor of the building. The video follows a group of people rushing outside the bombed house carrying two unresponsive bodies.
Both of the named of the victims have been matched with the Palestinian Ministry of Health list of fatalities in Gaza released on October 26th, 2023.
Where sources identified the belligerent, all sources attributed the airstrikes to Israeli forces.