Baby Saved from Gaza Rubble after Mother Killed in Israeli Strike

A picture taken from a position in southern Israel, along the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke billowing over the Palestinian territory during Israeli bombardment on December 29, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
A picture taken from a position in southern Israel, along the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke billowing over the Palestinian territory during Israeli bombardment on December 29, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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Baby Saved from Gaza Rubble after Mother Killed in Israeli Strike

A picture taken from a position in southern Israel, along the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke billowing over the Palestinian territory during Israeli bombardment on December 29, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
A picture taken from a position in southern Israel, along the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke billowing over the Palestinian territory during Israeli bombardment on December 29, 2023, amid continuing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)

The rescuers in orange vests shouted as they reached a baby girl still alive in the rubble of an Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip's Rafah city after yet another night of bombardment of the Palestinian enclave.

Baby Mariam Abu Akel's skin was grey with dust and she made little noises as the rescuers reached deep into the rubble to free her legs and lift her clear.

People crowded around in the ruins of the Abu Edwan family's house, where Mariam's family had been sheltering after they fled their own home in a more dangerous area near Gaza's border with Israel.

The air strike killed 20 people and wounded 55, according to Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra.

The Abu Edwan house had been sheltering many displaced people like the Abu Akel family.

Most of Gaza's population have had to flee their homes in the face of a withering bombardment and ground offensive that Israel says is aimed at destroying Hamas, which killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during its Oct. 7 attack.

The Israeli retaliatory assault has killed more than 21,500 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the enclave, many of them children under 18.

Mariam's mother and sister were both killed in the strike along with members of the Abu Edwan family and people from other families temporarily living with them. Her father and brother Hamed, still a toddler, survived the blast.

When Mariam was lifted free, a rescuer ran with her in his arms to take her to hospital. Doctors there swabbed her cuts.

‘I was shaking. I was terrified’

Rafah's hospitals were already dealing with the nightly influx of wounded people taken out of bombed houses.

Nadeen Abdulatif, 13, stood by a pile of debris next to the Rafah house where she and her family had taken shelter after their own home in Gaza City was ruined by an air strike targeting the building next door, which killed her older brother.

She could not stop thinking about being killed, or her other brother dying, she said. The air strike during the night had blown out the windows and rattled the building.

"My brother was shaking. I was shaking. I was scared. I didn't move from my place because of how terrified I was," she said.

At another air strike site, rescuers had pulled out two infant girls. In an ambulance, medics sponged a thick layer of dust from their faces as a badly bleeding boy sat opposite them, dazed.

In the hospital, children lay for treatment on the floor. A boy with bandages around his head and blood covering his face was crying. Next to him lay another boy with a brace around his neck. The two little girls lay on a stretcher.

Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians, saying Hamas is responsible for harm that comes to them by operating amongst them. Hamas denies this.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".