Opinion: What it's like to survive in Gaza when your children are killed The human tragedies caused by Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza are countless. Nearly two million Palestinians are living through pain and grief, and every family carries its own story of devastation, amid horrific massacres and the destruction of homes. For a mother, the death of a child is a heartbreak that lasts a lifetime. In Gaza, it has reached an unprecedented and unimaginable scale. Death has not come one by one, but in batches. On 24 May, Dr Alaa al-Najjar, a paediatrician, lost nine of her children in a single Israeli air strike. Her home was bombed while she was at work in Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, trying to save the wounded. No words are sufficient to capture what these mothers have endured. Yet some, whose children were killed by Israel, have chosen to share their stories. I bring together the accounts of four mothers, drawn from direct conversations and words they shared publicly on Facebook. Their experiences offer only a glimpse of the overwhelming catastrophe families across Gaza have faced since October 2023. What it's like to survive in Gaza when your children are killed Opinion by Ahmed Abu Artema A Palestinian mother cradles the body of her daughter Ibtissam Elyan, who was killed when an Israeli air strike hit the family home in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on 25 March 2025 (Bashar Taleb/AFP)