Israeli strike kills a 5-month-old girl and her parents in Gaza
Yaqeen was conceived in war. She died in a fireball.
An Israeli bomb killed the 5-month-old in her family’s apartment, next to a Carrefour Mall in Tal al-Hawa, a neighborhood in Gaza City.
Her father, Ali Aoun Sbeita, 30, and mother, Saja Ammar Sbeita, 25, burned to death in the same strike.
The next day, video taken by an NBC News’ crew on the ground outside the morgue in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City showed Yaqeen’s grandfather, Ammar Shalah, 50, holding her body wrapped in a white sheet — pristine except for patches of blood.
“Was she striking Israel?” demanded 45-year-old Nasar Sbeita, Yaqeen’s uncle. Referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he added: “A 5-month-old baby girl: Here are Netanyahu’s targets.”
Yaqeen’s grandmother (Shalah’s wife) howled and relatives held her back. Between tears, she yelled that Saja was nursing her baby when the family was killed.
Minutes later, the three bodies joined the stream of corpses carried from the hospital and through a crowd of distressed onlookers to a patch of paving stones where funeral rites were performed. Yaqeen’s shroud was opened to show her face, gray and still.
The Israeli military did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment on why it had targeted the apartment where the family was staying.
At least 60 Palestinians were killed Monday by Israeli airstrikes and gunfire, according to Marwan Al-Hams, the director of Gaza’s field hospitals. The numbers include those captured by NBC News’ footage on the ground.
More than 56,000 people have been killed in Gaza and thousands more seriously injured since Israel launched its offensive there after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, according to health officials in the enclave. About 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage in Israel that day.
More than 50,000 of those killed and injured in Gaza have been children, Edouard Beigbeder, Unicef’s regional director for the Middle East and Africa, said in May. “These children — lives that should never be reduced to numbers — are now part of a long, harrowing list of unimaginable horror,” he said in a statement.
Israeli attacks in Gaza continued overnight on Wednesday, killing 58 people since dawn, including 45 in the city of Khan Yunis and several more who were waiting for aid, according to Al-Hams.
In Washington, talks of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas resumed this week after Netanyahu met President Donald Trump at the White House.
The two leaders discussed the war in Gaza, now in its 22nd month, including plans for a 60-day ceasefire proposed by Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff.
Witkoff later told reporters at the White House that the two sides were close to reaching a deal that has so far remained deadlocked over whether it will lead to a permanent end to the fighting.
After the meeting, Netanyahu said Israel’s military campaign in Gaza would continue as negotiators worked on a ceasefire.
“We still have to finish the job in Gaza, release all our hostages, eliminate and destroy Hamas’ military and government capabilities,” he said.
A short distance from the Carrefour Mall, Amer Al-Katnani, 38, and his 14-year-old son, Ahmad, were inside a jeep parked near the gates of the maternity ward at Al-Shifa hospital when an Israeli drone struck the vehicle, setting it alight in a blazing inferno.
Onlookers removed the bodies of four people killed in the blast, including the father and son. Their heads, exploded by the force of the blast, were reduced to clumps of flesh as their bodies partly melted inside the car.
The father and son were food merchants, their family said.
Plumes of smoke surrounded the mashed-up car as the bodies were wrapped in blankets and taken to a hospital morgue, video footage captured by NBC News showed.
Afterward, children scavenged the blast site for junk, including the ripped cushion of the car seat.