President Joe Biden recalled the car crash that killed in wife and daughter in 1972, while meeting with Israeli first responders.
Mr Biden, 80, brought up the tragedy during a visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, following the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October.
He was speaking to New York-born Dr Jordanna Hadas Koppel, who was among the first to treat injured children after the Hamas attacks.
Dr Koppel said the only warning she had before walking into the chaos was that there had been a “mass casualty event”.
“Some babies burned in their mother’s arms, some with stories that I don’t think they’ll ever recover from,” she said.
“I treat Palestinian children, I treat Jewish children, when my resident calls me at home at night that somebody is not doing well, I don’t ask where they’re from.”
In response to the heartbreaking account, Mr Biden said he still remembered his biggest experience with a similar trauma.
“I got a phone call saying my wife and daughter were dead,” he said.
Joe Biden was in Israel when he made the comments— (AP)
Neilia Biden, the president’s first wife, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident while out shopping for a Christmas tree in December 1972.
She had driven the car past a stop sign and directly into the path of a tractor-trailer.
Mr Biden carried out a first-ever wartime visit to Israel by a US president— (EPA)
Mr Biden also acknowledged the nurses who treated his sons Beau and Hunter, who were three and two years old at the time and also in the car.
The president had been elected to the US Senate just weeks before the tragedy.
His remarks come at the tail end of a first-ever wartime visit to Israel by a US president — the second time he has traveled to an active conflict area this year.
Neilia Biden, the President’s first wife, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in 1972— (Bettmann Archive)
Mr Biden strongly condemned the Hamas attacks, which left more than 1,000 Israelis dead and scores more injured or kidnapped to Gaza as hostages.
He labelled the attacks “atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS” and slammed the militant group for “unleashing pure unadulterated evil on upon the world”.
