Copy in clipboard...
Israel’s war has wiped out entire Palestinian families: Investigation
Then, branch by branch, 173 of Youssef Salem’s relatives were killed in Israeli airstrikes in a matter of days in December. By spring that toll had risen to 270.
Bones and flesh strewn over the ruins of family homes. Blond curls of a young cousin peeking through bricks. Unrecognizable bodies piled on a donkey cart. Lines of burial shrouds.
These images are what survivors are left with from hundreds of families in Gaza like the Al-Aghas, Salems and Abu Najas.
To a degree never seen before, Israel is killing entire Palestinian families, a loss even more devastating than the physical destruction and the massive displacement.
An Associated Press investigation identified at least 60 Palestinian families where at least 25 people were killed – sometimes four generations from the same bloodline – in bombings between October and December, the deadliest and most destructive period of the war.
Nearly a quarter of those families lost more than 50 family members in those weeks. Several families have almost no one left to document the toll, especially as documenting and sharing information became harder.
Youssef Salem’s hard drive is stocked with photos of the dead. He spent months filling a spreadsheet with their vital details as news of their deaths was confirmed, to preserve a last link to the web of relationships he thought would thrive for generations more.
“My uncles were wiped out, totally. The heads of households, their wives, children, and grandchildren,” Salem said from his home in Istanbul.
In the last two decades, 10 members of his family were killed in Israeli strikes. “Nothing like this war,” he said.
The AP review encompassed casualty records released by Gaza’s health ministry until March, online death notices, family and neighborhood social media pages and spreadsheets, witness and survivor accounts, as well as a casualty data from Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor.