Palestinians mourn the death of 2 sisters , 10 and 12 who were killed in an Israeli military strike, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. My daughters are gone,” Abu Jamea, 44, shouted at the crowd gathered around him at the Hospital.
Attacks and the escalating death toll have rocked the U.S.-backed truce and caused Palestinians in the Strip to say it doesn’t feel like the war has ended.
Father of the 2 sisters killed by Israel is shown crying after he found out they were both dead . My daughters are gone,” Abu Jamea, 44, shouted as he cried at the hospital
Leaning over his 12-year-old daughter’s body, Rami Essam Abu Jamea kissed her cheek.
“Wake up,” he asked little Rima as tears welled up in his eyes. “Who will bring me water now?”
He then turned and kissed his 10-year-old daughter, Rahaf, who was also killed, video shot for NBC News on Wednesday shows.
“My daughters are gone,” Abu Jamea, 44, shouted at the crowd gathered around him in the Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis. Between crying fits and devastated silences, he told the crowd that the sisters were killed by an Israeli missile that hit near the family’s tent in Al-Mawasi camp.
When his wife, Sanaa Abdullah Buwaid, joined him a short while later, the pair embraced for a long time and wept after losing what Abu Jamea said were their only children.
The sisters were among at least 23 Palestinians killed in Gaza on Wednesday, most of them women and children, hospital officials say.
The Israeli military said it struck Al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza, after militants fired on its soldiers in the north of the Strip, seriously wounding one of them. The troops, it said in a statement, were on the east, or the Israeli-controlled side, of the “yellow line” — the boundary the country’s military has marked out with concrete blocks of that color to delineate it from the 53% of Gaza it still controls.
Armored units and the country’s air force conducted “strikes in the area,” the statement added. The wounded Israeli soldier was evacuated to a hospital and his family was notified, according to the statement.
In a separate statement, the Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas commander who led the attack on Nir Oz kibbutz, one of the worst-hit communities on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Prior to and during the strike, steps were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians as much as possible, including the use of surveillance and precise munitions,” the statement added. “The IDF regrets any harm caused to uninvolved civilians.”
In another statement, the Israeli military said it had “eliminated” a separate militant who it says killed Cpl. Noa Marciano, who served in the IDF’s Combat Intelligence Collection Corps, in Hamas captivity.
Meanwhile, at least 11 people, most from the same family, were killed in the Tuffah neighborhood of northern Gaza, The Associated Press quoted an official at Shifa Hospital as saying. The dead included two parents, their 10-day-old girl, her 5-month-old cousin and their grandmother, the AP reported.
The nearly two dozen killed on Wednesday were the latest Palestinians fatalities since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal came into effect on Oct. 10, with more than 520 people dying since then, according to the health ministry in the enclave which is still nominally run by Hamas.
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