A new investigation conducted by The Associated Press revealed that the ongoing war in Gaza is wiping out hundreds of people from the same familial bloodline.
As Israel continues its unprecedented ground and air raid in the Gaza enclave, the death toll has reached new heights, and it’s affecting many people from the same family.
The AP analyzed 10 different strikes across the enclave that occurred from October through December last year, killing more than 500 people total. While most families in Palestine have suffered multiple losses, there are a few that have been completely decimated.
To draw its conclusions, the AP analyzed the strikes by geolocating them, consulting with weapons investigators and legal experts, and drawing on data from the London-based group Airwars.
The strikes were on shelters and residential buildings that were housing large families. In all 10 of the strikes the AP analyzed, there wasn’t any sign of a military target for Israel.
It’s a military campaign now that has become much deadlier already than the 1948 displacement from Israel, according to Columbia University historian Rashid Khalidi. In that incident, which is today called the Nakbah — or Catastrophe — there were 20,000 people killed.
As he said:
“I don’t think anything like this has happened in modern Palestinian history.”
One family that the AP discussed in its report was the Al-Agha family, which has experienced 31 deaths — 11 in one airstrike that occurred on October 11 of last year.
Another 10 members of the family were killed during a bomb strike on October 14, and another nine were killed during an airstrike a month later, on November 14.
Emily Tripp, who serves as Airwars’ director, said that the investigators that work for her group have struggled to grapple with how widespread the killings have been in some families. She said:
“At times, we had to create family trees to understand the civilian harm.”
Another family the AP studied was the Abu Naja family, which experienced 20 deaths. All 20 of those members of the family were immediately killed during an October 17 airstrike in southern Rafah that hit the homes of the Madi and Abu Naja families.
Among those killed were eight children and two women who were pregnant.
The Souri and Tarzai families have also experienced 20 deaths in the family since the start of the Gaza war. All 20 members of the intermarried families were killed during an October 19 airstrike.
That attack from Israel destroyed a Gaza City church, where hundreds of people who had already been displaced by the war were sheltering. At least seven children were killed in that strike, including all three children of Ramez al-Souri, who also lost his wife.
The military in Israel only confirmed that the strike hit a command-and-control center run by Hamas. The country has consistently accused the terrorist group of embedding themselves among civilians, which is why so many civilians have been killed.
Amnesty analyzed videos and visited the attack site, and said that even if they were able to identify a military target, the attack “was reckless and therefore amounts to a war crime.”