Gaza hospital director receives bodies of brother and other relatives while on duty
Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya performs funeral prayers for his family members killed in an Israeli airstrike on his family home in the Al Shati refugee camp
By Caitlin Danaher, Ibrahim Dahman, CNN
(CNN) — On Friday, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya left his family home for a shift as the director of the Al-Shifa hospital. A day later, the bodies of six family members arrived while he was still on duty.
An Israeli airstrike struck his home in the Al Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, where multiple generations had been living together, the doctor said.
“This is the family home where we live. My brother, two of my brother’s sons, my nephew’s wife, and two of their children were martyred,” Abu Salmiya told CNN.
The strike on Abu Salmiya’s family home killed six people and injured seven others, including the hospital director’s sister, niece and nephews, he said.
CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the target of the strikes.
A video shared by the Director General of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, showed a grief-stricken Abu Salmiya kneeling next to the bodies of his family members at the hospital, still wearing his doctor’s scrubs.
“We pray that God grants patience and strength to his heart and the hearts of his family,” Al-Bursh said in a post on social media.
Gaza’s civil defense said they rescued four injured people and recovered three bodies at the home in Gaza’s northern beach area.
“A missing person remains buried under the rubble. Our crews are trying to reach him and retrieve him,” the civil defense said.
The latest assault come as global outcry intensifies over Israel’s attempts to capture Gaza City. Tens of thousands have been fleeing the city, which has seen Israel demolishing high-rise buildings.
Israel says the city, Gaza’s largest, remains a Hamas stronghold. The group’s military wing issued an image of the remaining Israeli hostages it is holding, warning the incursion in Gaza City means that Israel has lost any chance of getting its hostages out of the territory.
More than 65,200 Palestinian people in Gaza have been killed since October 7, 2023, according to the latest figures from the Palestinian health ministry.
The United Nations and others have warned that the assault will worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis, with parts of the Gaza officially declared under famine.
This week, an independent United Nations inquiry concluded for the first time that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which Israel firmly denies.
The-CNN-Wire
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