News - Middle East: Medical sources in Gaza report that Dr. Aya Al-Madhoon, a pregnant Palestinian doctor and recent medical school graduate, was killed alongside her husband and their nine-month-old unborn child on Friday.

The family was struck by an Israeli tank shell or drone while walking near Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah.

Doctors performed an emergency cesarean in an attempt to save the baby, but all three were pronounced dead. Several other civilians were also killed in the attack.

 Last week, an Israeli strike killed nearly the entire family of a Khan Younis pediatrician, Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, while she was working at Nasser Hospital, Gaza health officials reported.

The attack struck al-Najjar’s home on May 23, setting it ablaze and killing nine of her ten children, according to Dr. Ahmad al-Farra, head of the hospital’s pediatrics department.

The martyred children, aged seven months to 12 years, were identified as Sidar, Luqman, Sadin, Reval, Ruslan, Jubran, Eve, Rakan, and Yahya. 

On May 23, Dr Najjar received the charred remains of seven of her 10 children. The bodies of two others were buried beneath the rubble. 

A few miles away on the same day, 11-year-old Yaqeen Hammad, known as Gaza’s youngest social media influencer, was killed when Israeli airstrikes hit the house where she lived with her family. Her cousin, 16-year-old Eyad, was gravely wounded.

Dr Najjar’s husband sustained critical injuries, including severe chest wounds and a skull fracture.

The couple’s only surviving child, 11-year-old Adam, is also severely injured and under care in the hospital’s moderate ICU, alongside his mother.

The Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa of the UN’s International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) says the Israeli regime is directly responsible for the death or injury of more than 50,000 children in Gaza either through direct military assault or through causing hunger and disease.

Edouard Beigbeder on Wednesday condemned the toll the Gaza war has had on the Palestinian children of the enclave and how indifferent the Israeli regime has been toward child casualties.

“Since the end of the ceasefire on March 18, 1,309 children have been killed and 3,738 injured. In total, more than 50,000 children have reportedly been killed or injured since October 2023. How many more dead girls and boys will it take?” he said.

According to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), Gaza suffers from phase 5 famine, and nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are at risk of acute malnutrition.

The IPC defines phase 5 famine as when at least one in five households experience an extreme lack of food and face starvation, resulting in destitution, extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition, and death.

Source: Press TV