Yahya al-Najjar

Yahya al-Najjar, twelve, was the eldest of the ten children of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, a pediatrician at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar. His sixteen-year-old cousin Tahani remembered playing and singing with him and his siblings, and said the children wanted to become doctors like their parents; a neighbor’s account in Drop Site News reported that Yahya had memorized the entire Quran.

On Friday, May 23, 2025, Hamdi al-Najjar drove his wife to her shift at Nasser Hospital and had just returned home to the family’s house in the Qizan al-Najjar neighborhood, south of Khan Younis, when an Israeli airstrike brought the house down on the ten children inside and set it ablaze. Nine of the children were killed: Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Gebran, Eve, Rival, Sayden, Luqman and Sidra, whose names were reported by the BBC; their eleven-year-old brother Adam was the only survivor, critically wounded. Yahya and the youngest of his siblings were the last unaccounted for, their bodies initially missing beneath the rubble, according to relatives. His mother, still on duty, ran home on foot when she heard the strikes hit her neighborhood and found her house destroyed; the charred bodies of her children were brought to the hospital where she worked.

Their father was critically wounded and died of his wounds nine days later, leaving Dr. Alaa and the injured Adam as the family’s only survivors. Asked about the strike, the Israeli military told ABC News its aircraft had “struck a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure adjacent to IDF troops” in the area and that “the claim regarding harm to uninvolved civilians is under review.”

Sources

• 9 of a doctor’s 10 children are killed in Israel’s latest strikes in Gaza — AP
• Israel’s latest strikes in Gaza kill 38 people including children — AP
• Gaza pediatrician and mother loses 9 of 10 children after Israeli airstrike hits their home — ABC News
• The Massacre of Nine Children of the Al-Najjar Family — Drop Site News