Gaza medic realises he's carrying his mother's body, killed by Israel

A Palestinian ambulance worker has made a horrific discovery when the bloody sheet was lifted: The corpse on the stretcher was his own mother, killed by an Israeli air strike in central besieged Gaza.

"Oh God, I swear — she's my mother! I didn't know it was her!" Abed Bardini sobbed on Wednesday as he leaned over his mother, Samira, cradling her head in his arms.

Fellow Red Crescent medics tried to console him.

Bardini had unknowingly sat in the ambulance beside her body, wrapped in a white sheet stained dark with blood, as the vehicle bounced across broken roads for about 2 kilometres toward Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Three people were killed and at least ten wounded by the Israeli strike on a car in the Maghazi refugee camp, according to Palestinian health officials and Associated Press journalists. Health officials at the hospital said two of the dead were men sitting in the vehicle, and the blast had fatally wounded 61-year-old Samira Bardini as she stood nearby.

Abed Bardini was in one of two ambulances dispatched to the scene. Back at the hospital, he unloaded the stretcher with practised professionalism, squinting into the late afternoon sun as he wheeled the body across the hospital courtyard.

Inside, medical staff pulled back the blanket to check for signs of life, and Bardini's strength collapsed.

Later, his tears exhausted, he sat in the morgue beside Samira's body with his head in his hands, comforted by his Red Crescent colleagues.

They held a funeral prayer over her body in the parking lot, and then Bardini personally helped carry the body into an ambulance for burial.

Israeli carnage

Israel has killed at least 43,163 Palestinians, mostly women and children, so far in its carnage in besieged Gaza and wounded over 101,510 others.

Its onslaught caused a massive shortage of basic necessities, including water, food, electricity and medicine, while also displacing almost the entire population.

Israel has also killed at least 2,822 people in Lebanon since last year and launched strikes on military sites in Iran, mounting fear it could drag the entire region into an all-out war.

Tel Aviv faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its carnage in besieged Gaza.