- The mother was one of three people killed in an attack on the Maghazi refugee camp
Heartbreaking photos show the tragic moment a Palestinian ambulance worker realized the body he was transporting was his own mother, killed by an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza.
“Oh God, I swear, she’s my mother! I didn’t know it was her!’ Abed Bardini sobbed as he leaned over his mother Samira and cradled her head in his arms.
Bardini had sat unknowingly next to her body in the ambulance, wrapped in a white sheet darkly stained with blood, as the vehicle bounced along broken roads for about 2 kilometers towards the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.
He made the gruesome discovery after the bloody sheet covering her body was lifted at the hospital, where fellow Red Crescent medics desperately tried to comfort him.
Samira was one of three people killed in Wednesday’s Israeli attack on a car in the Maghazi refugee camp, while at least 10 were injured, according to Palestinian health officials and journalists.
Abed Bardini sobbed as he leaned over his mother Samira and cradled her head in his arms
The Palestinian ambulance worker sat in the morgue next to Samira’s body with his head in his hands
Health officials at the hospital said two of the dead were men who were in the vehicle, and that the blast fatally injured 61-year-old Samira Bardini as she stood nearby.
Abed Bardini was in one of the two ambulances sent to the scene.
Back at the hospital, he unloaded the stretcher with practiced professionalism, squinting in the late afternoon sun as he wheeled the body across the hospital courtyard.
Inside, medical staff pulled back the blanket to check for signs of life, and Bardini’s strength waned.
Later, exhausted from tears, he sat in the morgue next to Samira’s body with his head in his hands, comforted by his Red Crescent colleagues.
They held a funeral prayer over her body in the parking lot, after which Bardini personally helped carry the body to an ambulance for burial.
An Israeli army spokesman did not immediately comment on the attack.
Israel says it is carrying out precision strikes in Gaza, targeting Palestinian terrorists, and trying to prevent harm to civilians. But the strikes often kill women and children.
A view of the vehicle destroyed following the Israeli attacks on the Maghazi refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on October 30, 2024
Samira was one of three people killed in the Israeli attack on a car in the Maghazi refugee camp on Wednesday, according to Palestinian health officials.
A Palestinian boy sits on the rubble of the destroyed Maghazi Camp Services Club building after an Israeli attack on the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on October 24, 2024
Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war.
Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. They do not say how many fighters, but more than half were women and children.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that 102 deaths had been recorded in the past 24 hours.