July 22, 2026
For the Al-Masri family, the dawn of this past Tuesday was anything but ordinary. At exactly 3:00 AM, the silence of the night was shattered by a massive explosion that turned their apartment into a raging inferno. Amidst the scene—where the children's dreams vanished while they slept—Mohammed Ahmed Al-Masri found himself trapped in a situation embodying the depths of human tragedy.
"An entire family wiped out by fire"—with these agonizing words, heavy with anguish, Mohammed recounted the details of the tragedy in which he lost his brother, his sister-in-law, and their four children. He described the moments of terror and death that drove him to make a harrowing, fateful decision: throwing his nieces, nephews, and sister-in-law from the window to escape the flames that were consuming everything.
Screams Amidst the Flames
The tragedy began with a sudden strike on the apartment where Mohammed lived with his brother’s family and his elderly mother. Located in a part of Gaza City near the confrontation lines with the Israeli occupation, the home was engulfed in flames—consuming the walls entirely—almost before the survivors could even grasp the magnitude of the shock.
Speaking to Al Jazeera with deep anguish, Mohammed recounted how his helplessness stood as a barrier preventing him from saving his brother, his sister-in-law, and the four children. The meager supply of water in the home had run out, while thick columns of smoke choked the air and the children’s desperate cries for help—"Save us, Uncle!"—echoed from the next room. The Window: A Lifeline
In a pivotal moment between life and death—amidst the sheer force of an explosion that tore away the windows' iron security grilles—Mohammed made a fateful decision to save whatever he could of his family. The grief-stricken father recounts: "I began grabbing my children and throwing them out the window; I could not bear to watch them burn before my eyes."
Mohammed did not hesitate to throw his children and his pregnant wife from the window, unconcerned about what awaited them below; his sole mission was to get them away from the flames. He then threw himself out after them, rushing to reach his elderly mother and rescue her from another window with the help of neighbors.
The horrific raid claimed the lives of six members of the Al-Masri family: the father, the mother, and their four children (aged between 6 and 13). After two hours of arduous effort by ambulance and civil defense crews to bring the fire under control, the family's bodies were recovered from the rubble, completely charred.
The four children are gone, leaving behind their coloring books and the joy they felt at the prospect of returning to school. With them, 13-year-old Naeem—who had memorized the Quran—also perished. Their final screams and cries remain etched in the mind of their surviving uncle, an eternal testament to a massacre that wiped an entire family from civil records.
