A Mother’s Last Child
An Israeli airstrike killed 18-month-old Zaid Nofal on Thursday when it hit a residential apartment belonging to the Nofal family in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, without prior warning, according to medical sources at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Zaid was his mother’s last surviving child. His three older siblings — Ahmad, who was under a year old, 16-year-old Ameen, and 11-year-old Hamza — were all killed in October 2023, in the early months of the war. With Zaid’s death, their mother has now lost all of her children.
A Family Erased Across Two Years of War.
Zaid’s story, like Rita’s, spread on social media as a stark illustration of how entire families have been wiped out over the course of the war — his mother outliving all four of her children, from a 16-year-old to a baby not yet two. Children and women continue to bear the heaviest toll of Israel’s ceasefire violations: since October 11 of last year, they have made up roughly 60% to 70% of the 1,214 Palestinians killed despite the truce, meaning an estimated 400 to 500 of the dead have been children — a toll that now includes both Zaid and Rita, killed hours apart on the same night.
Zaid’s death came during a wave of Israeli strikes that hit scattered areas across southern, central, and northern Gaza overnight and into Thursday morning, killing at least six Palestinians in total, including two children, and wounding dozens more. In southern Gaza, a separate strike on a displacement tent in the Mawasi area west of Khan Younis killed 8-year-old Rita and one other person. Journalists on the ground described a violent night for residents, with strikes hitting multiple locations in quick succession and bombardment reported to have continued without pause since midnight.