A Palestinian ambulance worker was devastated to discover he had been carrying the body of his own mother while responding to the scene of an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza.
Abed Bardini was in one of two ambulances dispatched to the site of the fatal strike on Wednesday.
Unknowingly, he sat beside his mother’s body, wrapped in a blood-stained white sheet, as the vehicle travelled around 2km (1.2 miles) over broken roads to a nearby hospital in Deir al-Balah.
At the hospital, he unloaded the stretcher and wheeled the body across the courtyard.
Inside, medical staff pulled back the blanket to check for signs of life, and Mr Bardini collapsed into sobs as he realised the body was that of his mother, Samira.
"Oh God, I swear — she's my mother! I didn't know it was her!" Mr Bardini excalimed in Arabic as he leaned over his mother, cradling her head in his arms. Fellow Red Crescent medics tried to console him.
Three people were killed and at least 10 wounded by the Israeli strike on a car in Maghazi refugee camp, according to Palestinian health officials and Associated Press journalists.
Health officials at the hospital said two of the dead were men sitting in the vehicle, and the blast had fatally injured 61-year-old Samira Bardini as she stood nearby.
Mr Bardini later sat in the morgue beside his mother’s body with his head in his hands, comforted by his Red Crescent colleagues.
They held a funeral prayer over her body in the car park, hen Mr Bardini personally helped carry the body into an ambulance for burial.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike. Israel says it carries out precise strikes in Gaza targeting Palestinian militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. But the strikes often kill women and children.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted around 250 in the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war.
Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children. Gaza's Health Ministry said Wednesday that 102 deaths were recorded over the past 24 hours.
