A PAIR OF twin newborns and their mother have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza.

A few miles to the south, three-month-old baby Reem Abu Hayyah was the only member of her family to survive a strike late on Monday.

Mohamed Abuel-Qomasan lost his wife and their twin babies — just four days old — in another strike.

More than 10 months into its war with Hamas, Israel’s relentless bombardment of the isolated territory has wiped out extended families.

The strike that killed Mr Abuel-Qomasan’s wife and newborns — a boy, Asser, and a girl, Ayssel — also killed the twins’ maternal grandmother.

As he sat in a hospital, stunned into near-silence by the loss, he held up the twins’ birth certificates.

His wife Joumana Arafa, a pharmacist, had given birth four days ago and announced the twins’ arrival on Facebook.

On Tuesday, he had gone to register the births at a local government office. While he was there, neighbours called to say the home where he was sheltering, near the central city of Deir al-Balah, had been bombed.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.” 

An Israeli strike on Monday destroyed a home near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 10 people.

The victims included Reem Abu Hayyah’s parents and five siblings, ranging in age from five to 12, as well as the parents of three other children.

All four children were wounded in the strike.

“There is no one left except this baby,” said her aunt Soad Abu Hayyah.

“Since this morning, we have been trying to feed her formula, but she does not accept it, because she is used to her mother’s milk.”

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said 115 newborns have been killed in the territory since the war began.

The military says it tries to avoid harming Palestinian civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense residential areas, sometimes sheltering in and launching attacks from homes, schools, mosques and other civilian buildings.

But the army rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war.

Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 in the October 7 attack into southern Israel that ignited the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often said that “they killed parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents” to illustrate the brutality of the attack, most recently in his July address to the United States Congress.

Israel’s offensive has left thousands of orphans — so many that local doctors employ an acronym when registering them: WCNSF, or “wounded child, no surviving family.”

The United Nations estimated in February that some 17,000 children in Gaza are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The Abu Hayyah family was sheltering in an area that Israel had ordered people to evacuate in recent days.

Many families have ignored the evacuation orders because they say nowhere feels safe, or because they are unable to make the arduous journey on foot, or because they fear they will never be able to return to their homes, even after the war.

Mr Abuel-Qomasan and his wife had heeded orders to evacuate Gaza City in the opening weeks of the war.

They sought shelter in central Gaza, as the army had instructed.

Ceasefire talks

Ceasefire talks will be held in the Qatari capital tomorrow, two sources close to the negotiations said, while it remains unclear if Hamas will participate.

Hamas turned down the invitation to the the new round of talks, saying instead that it was in favour of implementing the plan proposed by US President Joe Biden’s earlier this year.

Qatar has been engaged in behind-the-scenes efforts, with support from Egypt and the United States, to reach a deal for a Gaza truce and prisoner exchange after more than 10 months of war.

A source close to Hamas and a second source close to the talks confirmed Thursday’s meeting in Doha.

CIA director William Burns was also scheduled to travel to Doha for talks, according to a US source familiar with the meeting.

The US State Department has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had confirmed Israel’s participation.

“Our Qatari partners have assured us that they are working to ensure that there is Hamas representation as well,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.

The Israelis should “come to agree on a (deal) or not come at all”, said a source close to Hamas, without specifying if the Palestinian movement will take part in the talks.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has approved the departure of the Israeli delegation to Doha tomorrow, as well as the mandate for conducting the negotiations,” a statement from his office said.

The head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, David Barnea, and Shin Bet security service chief Ronen Bar will also attend the talks. 

Qatar, Egypt and the United States last week called for the resumption of talks “to close all remaining gaps and commence implementation of the deal without further delay”.

A letter signed by Qatar’s emir and the presidents of the United States and Egypt said a framework agreement was “now on the table, with only the details of implementation” left to conclude.

With reporting from David Mac Redmond and AFP