Shortly before 15:27 on Friday, June 21, 2024, ten civilians belonging to the Salah and Abu Sultan families, including two women and two children, were reportedly killed and up to 20 others were wounded in an alleged Israeli airstrike on the Gaza Strip. The attack hit a house belonging to the Salah family in the Al Shati refugee camp located west of Gaza City.
Safa News was the first to report the incident at 15:27, writing about the injured and killed civilians. According to its later update, ten people were killed and 17 others were wounded, and the wounded were transported to Al-Baptadi Hospital following the strike. Another report from Twitter/X user @qudsn indicated that 20 people had been injured.
Social media posts by family members and friends helped Airwars to identify the 10 civilians who had been killed in the strike.
36-year-old Hassan Nour Al-Huda Hassan Salah was killed alongside his 32-year-old brother Muhammad Nour Al-Huda Hassan Salah.
Among the reported casualties were also relatives 19-year-old Akram Nasser Muhammad Salah and 17-year-old Abdul Karim Khalil Mustafa Kullab.
48-year-old Salim Hamza Ali Abu Sultan was killed alongside his daughter Marwa Salim Hamza Abu Sultan (age unknown) and his 22-year-old son Ali Salim Hamza Abu Sultan.
Additionally, Salim’s brother 41-year-old Muhammad Hamza Ali Abu Sultan lost his life along with the lives of his wife Umm Anas Abu Sultan, and their 16-year-old daughter Aya Muhammad Hamza Abu Sultan.
Several Facebook posts from relatives and neighbours expressed sorrow over the loss of members of the Salah family, sharing photographs of the victims on social media.
Siraj Al-Shaer wrote a condolence message to the Salah family, in particular Abu Hassan Salah for the martyrdom of his sons Hassan Salah (Abu Yazan) and Muhammad Salah (Abu Malik). She shared an image of the young Muhammad dressed in a suit and smiling at the camera, and an image of Hassan holding two small children.
Facebook account “Beach today” also mourned the death of “one of the moons”, “son of Al Shati Camp” Hassan, sharing the same image. In another post, the account paid a tribute to the late Akram Salah, sharing an image of the young man dressed in a black T-shirt and a black vest.
Abu Ghazi Jalhoum grieved the death of young Abdul Karim Khalil Mustafa Kullab, posting an image of a teenager dressed in a black T-shirt.
In a video posted on the Facebook page of Al Araby TV Network, Tahseen Muheisen, the Director of Ambulance Services at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, spoke about the ongoing rescue operations. A video on Beach Today’s Facebook page, posted on the day of the strike, showed extensive structural damage as rescue workers retrieved bodies from the site.
Where possible, names have been matched with the Palestinian Ministry of Health list of fatalities in Gaza released on July 24, 2024.
Where sources identified a belligerent, all sources attributed the strike to Israeli forces.