On July 16, 2024, Palestinian father Mahmoud Mikdad, a Palestinian, held and grieved over the body of Yaman, a nine-month-old infant killed in an Israeli air strike at the morgue of Deir al-Balah Hospital in the Gaza Strip, Palestine.
The deceased Palestinian infant's limbs were pale and cold despite the sweltering summer heat in the Gaza Strip. Outside Dil al-Balah Hospital, the father, Mahmoud Mikdad, cradled the infant in his arms as he said his goodbyes. In the hospital morgue, flies circled and perched on the infant's soft hair. The father, Mahmoud Mikdad, raised his voice and wondered what the child had done. He turned his face to the sky and grieved.
The father, Mahmoud Mikdad, was napping with his daughter and Yaman in the apartment where the family had taken refuge. The airstrike killed his son, Yaman, who was not yet two years old, instantly. Mahmoud Mikdad carried Yaman's body from the Nuseirat camp through central Gaza to the nearby al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah Hospital. Yaman's bare feet dangled limply from under a blood-soaked white sheet.
Outside the morgue, Mahmoud Mikdad and two others stroked the corpse. The father sat on the hospital wall for a while with his child, Yaman, on his lap and wept. A dozen men offered funeral prayers over Yamam's body, which was wrapped in a white shroud. Israeli airstrikes killed about 60 more Palestinians in southern and central Gaza during the night of July 15 and July 16, 2024, according to Dil al-Balah Hospital records and Gaza Strip health officials. The Israeli military said it swept away Hamas militants hiding among Palestinian civilians after the Gaza Strip offensive destroyed a network of underground tunnels.
Warning: Palestinian Mahmoud Mikdad morns as holding the body of his 21-month-old child Yaman, killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Tuesday, July 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
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