Newborn twins, just four days old, were among at least 16 people were killed by an Israeliairstrike in Gaza, Palestinian medical officials have said.
Baby boy Asser and baby girl Ayssel were tragically killed alongside their mother at home while their father Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan had gone to collect their birth certificates.
While he was away he received a call from his neighbours telling the airstrike had struck his home in the city Deir al Balah, killing his family, including his mother-in-law.
'I don't know what happened,' he said.'I am told it was a shell that hit the house.
'I didn't even have the time to celebrate them,' the newly bereaved father and widow added.
Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan cries and mourns as he shows the birth certificates of his twins after he learnt the news that his wife, four day-old twins babies and mother-in-law had died
This picture was shared widely on social media purportedly showing the twins shortly after they were born
Footage shoes the hysterical father being consoled by others at the hospital
Footage shoes the hysterical father being consoled by others at the hospital as he is holds up the twins' birth certificates in tears.
His wife, Joumana Arafa, a pharmacist, had given birth by Cesarean section and announced the twins' arrival on Facebook over the weekend.
The couple had followed orders to evacuate Gaza City in the opening weeks of the war and went further south, where they sought shelter in central Gaza, as the army had instructed.
Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry claim 115 infants have been born and killed in the war-torn enclave since the conflict broke out following Hamas' attack on Israelis in October.
On Tuesday, officials said that four women and seven children were amongst the 16 dead while four further children were orphaned.
Ten people were killed in a strike late on Monday on a house near the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israel ordered mass evacuations in recent days, saying it must act against Palestinian militants.
Bodies, counted by AP news agency, were taken to Nasser hospital, where a three-month-old baby was amongst those wounded.
The tragic child, called Reem Abu Hayyah, was the only member of her family to survive an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip late Monday.
Reem Abu Hayyah (pictured), just three months old, was the only member of her family to survive an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip late Monday
The Israeli strike destroyed a home near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 10 people. The dead included Abu Hayyah's parents and five siblings, ranging in age from 5 to 12, as well as the parents of three other children. All four children were wounded in the strike
Children, injured in an Israeli attack on a Palestinian family's house in Bureij refugee camp are seen as others also are being brought to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital
The dead included Abu Hayyah's parents and five siblings, ranging in age from 5 to 12, as well as the parents of three other children. All four children were wounded in the strike.
'There is no one left except this baby,' said her aunt, Soad Abu Hayyah. 'Since this morning, we have been trying to feed her formula, but she does not accept it, because she is used to her mother's milk.'
Abu al-Qumsan family were killed in a separate strike near Deir al-Balah, while another strike in central Gaza killed a man and his nephew.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes.
The IDF says it tries to avoid harming Palestinian civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense residential areas, sometimes sheltering in and launching attacks from homes, schools, mosques and other civilian buildings.
But the army rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children. Gaza's Health Ministry says nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, without saying how many were fighters.
The updated death toll from Palestinian officials comes as the United States approved a $20billion arms sale to Israel. It includes scores of fighter jets and advanced air-to-air missiles the State Department announced.
The father was consoled by others at the hospital as he was crying hysterically
On Tuesday, Abu al Qumsan had gone to register the births at a local government office. While he was there, neighbours called to say the home where he was sheltering with his family had been bombed (pictured: Abu al Qusam standing over the bodies of his family)
A man carries a bottle of water as Israeli army issues an evacuation warning to Palestinians in the Hamad area of Khan Yunis, Gaza
Congress was notified of the impending sale, which includes more than 50 F-15 fighter jets, Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles or AMRAAMs, 120mm tank ammunition and high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 in the October 7 attack into southern Israel that ignited the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often said that 'they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents' to illustrate the brutality of the attack, most recently in his address to the U.S. Congress last month.
Israel's offensive has left thousands of orphans - so many that local doctors employ an acronym when registering them: WCNSF, or 'wounded child, no surviving family.'
The United Nations estimated in February that some 17,000 children in Gaza are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.
The Abu Hayyah family was sheltering in an area that Israel had ordered people to evacuate from in recent days.
It was one of several such orders that have led hundreds of thousands to seek shelter in an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone consisting of squalid, crowded tent camps along the coast.
The vast majority of Gaza's population has fled their homes, often multiple times. The coastal strip, which is just 25 miles long by about 7 miles wide, has been completely sealed off by Israeli forces since May.
Around 84 per cent of Gaza's territory has been placed under evacuation orders by the Israeli military, according to the United Nations.
Many families have ignored the evacuation orders because they say nowhere feels safe, or because they are unable to make the arduous journey on foot, or because they fear they will never be able to return to their homes, even after the wa
