‘One of the most heartbreaking tragedies’: Gaza doctor’s last goodbye before nine children killed in airstrike

In the early hours of Friday, as she did every day, Dr Alaa al-Najjar said goodbye to her 10 children before leaving the house. The youngest, Sayden, six months old, was still sleeping. And like every day, with war raging in Gaza and Israeli strikes landing just metres from her neighbourhood in Khan Younis, Najjar worried about leaving them at home without her.

But Najjar, 35, had little choice. One of Gaza’s dwindling number of medics, a respected paediatrician at the Nasser medical complex, she had to go to work to care for injured babies who had barely survived Israeli attacks. She could never have imagined that that farewell to her family would be her last.