Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan was still at the hospital when he learned that his house had been bombed.
Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan had just collected the birth certificates of his three-day-old twins when he received the news: his Gaza apartment had been bombed, killing the babies and their mother.
Footage of a distraught Abu al-Qumsan, weeping and falling as he still holds the birth certificates, has been widely circulated on social media, becoming the latest emblem of the devastating toll of the war in the Palestinian territory.
“I was in the hospital at the time when the house was targeted,” he says, tears streaming down his face.
“There was a call, after the birth certificates were printed.
“The caller asked, ‘Are you OK and where are you?’ I told them I was at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, and I was told that my house had been bombed.”
Abu al-Qumsan had left his wife, the infants and his mother-in-law in the fifth-floor flat they shared in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, which has been relentlessly bombed by Israeli forces.
“I was informed that they are in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and I told them I am at the entrance to the hospital,” he says. “I went inside the hospital with the birth certificates in my hands … and they told me they are in the morgue.
