said this week<\/a>.<\/p>\nTrying to get food has been a deadly gamble for months, with more than 800 people killed since late May in near daily attacks by Israeli soldiers using weapons including tank shells and navy cannon to target desperate crowds near food distribution points.<\/p>\n
Trying to get clean water is also a struggle. Nearly two years of Israeli attacks have destroyed water treatment plants and pipe networks. In June Unicef warned that Gaza faces a human-made drought and that without fuel to operate remaining stations children could start dying of thirst.<\/p>\n
But until Sunday, there had not been any mass killings of people trying to collect water. The al-Ghussains sent their children to collect supplies for the family because they thought it was less dangerous than searching for food.<\/p>\n
Children wait to fill water bottles at a distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. Photograph: Anadolu\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Aid groups brought water in trucks to fill tanks at a water distribution station just a few streets away from the school where the family sought shelter after their own home was bombed. Karam would wait there in the sweltering heat for his turn at taps that often ran dry.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had no choice but to send them,\u201d Heba said. \u201cMany times, my son would go and wait for his turn, sometimes for an hour, only to end up with nothing because the water would run out before it reached everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he did get water, it was only 20 litres, very little for a family of seven but a heavy weight for a young boy. \u201cKaram was only nine years old and braver than dozens of men. He carried it without tiring or complaining.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karam al-Ghussain. Photograph: Supplied<\/p>\n
The long queues meant that Heba was not too worried when she heard the water station was hit. Her son left home not long before the bombing, so she assumed he would still have been at the back of a waiting crowd, some distance from the blast.<\/p>\n
As it turned out the queue was relatively small when he arrived, a stroke of fatally bad luck that probably delighted Karam in his last few minutes. It meant that when the bomb hit, he and his sister were right beside water station.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Lulu woke up, I told her to go help her brother carry the water containers. It was as if the missile was waiting for her to arrive to strike that place,\u201d Heba said.<\/p>\n
Ali Abu Zaid, 36, was one of the first on the scene, rushing to help survivors. As the dust and smoke cleared they revealed a horrific tableau.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach child was holding a water bucket, lying dead in place, covered in their own blood. The shrapnel had torn through their small bodies and disfigured their faces. The smell of gunpowder filled the area,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
People started loading the dead and injured on to donkey carts, as medical teams were slow to arrive, but there was nothing doctors could do for most of the victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if the ambulances had got there sooner, it wouldn\u2019t have made a difference. There was no saving anyone, these were lifeless bodies, completely shattered.\u201d<\/p>\n
The aftermath of the airstrike on the water distribution point in Nuseirat. Photograph: Reuters<\/p>\n
Ashraf raced to look for his children as soon as he heard the blast, but arrived after their bodies had been taken away to find only blood-stained water containers scattered on the street, and a terrifying silence.<\/p>\n
So he headed to hospital to continue the search, where he found their battered bodies laid out on the floor, and collapsed over them in grief. He married in his 30s, late for Gaza, and when his children arrived they became his world. Karam and Lulu\u2019s brutal deaths have shattered him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I saw them like that, I felt as if my heart was being stabbed with knives,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m still in shock. I\u2019ve become constantly afraid of losing the rest of my family and being left alone. I feel as if I\u2019m going to lose my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lulu (left) and Karam (right) with their father, Ashraf al-Ghussain, and their two other siblings. Photograph: Supplied<\/p>\n
Heba also went to look for Lulu and Karam at the water station but then headed back to the shelter, hoping to find them waiting with their dad. Perhaps she had learned a kind of grim optimism from previous brushes with death.<\/p>\n
The siblings had been rescued from the rubble of their home when an airstrike brought it down on top of them earlier in the war, and survived injuries after another bomb hit nearby. That streak would not last. \u201cThey survived twice, but not the third time,\u201d Heba said.<\/p>\n
Word of the children\u2019s fate had reached the school, but even in Gaza, where no family has escaped tragedy, the scale of Heba\u2019s loss was shocking.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe news of their martyrdom was already spreading, but no one told me,\u201d she said. \u201cNo one dared to deliver such terrible news.\u201d Instead they encouraged her to go look for them among the injured in al-Awda hospital.<\/p>\n
There she found her husband, and the shattered bodies of their beloved son and daughter, so full of life just a couple of hours earlier.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s military blamed the strike on a \u201cmalfunction\u201d that caused a bomb targeting a militant to fall short and hit the children, and said it was examining the incident.<\/p>\n
Abandoned water bottles where Karam and Lulu were killed. Photograph: Reuters<\/p>\n
Ashraf questioned this. \u201cThey have the most advanced technology and know exactly where the missile will fall and who the target is. How could this be a mistake? A \u2018mistake\u2019 that killed both of my children!\u201d<\/p>\n
The family couldn\u2019t afford a burial plot for the children, so they interred them beside Heba\u2019s father. They worry they may have to reopen the grave again for the youngest of their three surviving children if aid to civilians does not increase. At 18 months, Ghina is malnourished and has skin rashes because the family cannot afford nappies and don\u2019t have enough water to wash her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sleep hungry and wake up hungry, and thirsty, too, with the desalination stations barely operating,\u201d Heba said. \u201cThe entire world sees everything, yet they close their eyes as if they don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Gaza, being a helpful, loving child can be a death sentence. Heba al-Ghussain\u2019s nine-year-old son, Karam, was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-274377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114879218858016889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Father](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1752917652_325_1920.jpg\")
Father grieves over bodies of children killed in airstrike – video<\/p>\n