This archive report was first published on 15 May 2021.
On May 15, 2021, a devastating Israeli air strike hit the western Gaza Strip, claiming the lives of ten members of a single extended family.
According to medics in the Palestinian enclave, the eight children and two women were killed when a three-storey building in Shati refugee camp collapsed following the Israeli strike.
Israeli warplanes struck multiple targets in Gaza overnight, while Palestinian militants fired over 200 rockets at southern Israel, with around 30 falling short and hitting the ground inside Gaza, the Israeli military stated.
Speaking outside Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Muhammad al-Hadidi, the father of four of the children, expressed his desire for the world to see the 'unjust crimes' committed.
'They were safe in their homes, they did not carry weapons, they did not fire rockets,' he said of his children, who were killed 'wearing their clothes for Eid al-Fitr', the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.
Both Hadidi and his brother-in-law, Mohammad Abu Hattab, were away from Hattab's home when it collapsed, while their five-month-old baby miraculously survived.
A Hamas spokesman declared the deadly air strike 'a war crime in its own right', while the overall death toll in Gaza since Monday stood at 139, with 39 of them being children.
