RENNES, France: Palestinian social worker Tareq Abu Eita, 42, saw his entire life turned upside down in seconds when Israeli airstrikes hit his neighborhood at the start of the Gaza war.
On October 14, the bombing hit the walls of his two-story family home.
She killed his 77-year-old father Hamed, his 15-year-old wife Muntaha (37) and his 11-year-old son Iljas.
His two nieces, eight-year-old Mira and 14-year-old Tala, also lost their lives.
“Everything is gone,” Abu Eita said, a tear streaming down his face in the French city of Rennes after showing AFP phone pictures of his wedding and his late son.
He and another son, 14-year-old Fares, are among a handful of Palestinians wounded in the war who have been flown to France for specialist medical treatment.
The latest war in Gaza began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory offensive killed at least 39,550 people, according to the territory's health authorities, which did not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
“It's not just numbers,” Abu Eita said.
“Each of these human beings had their loved ones, their family, their memories.
He and his son Fares were outside their home in a refugee camp in northern Jabalia after receiving a water supply when the strikes hit, leaving them both seriously injured.
Fares suffered a large skull fracture that put him in a coma for more than three weeks.
After nine months of Israeli forces still pounding the devastated Gaza Strip, the two are recovering in France after extensive medical treatment.
However, Abu Eita is terrified that he could now also lose the other two sons he was forced to leave motherless in the besieged territory: 10-year-old Jud and 15-year-old Ahmad.
“If anything happens to them, it will be a disaster,” said the father.
“I really didn't make it.
Abu Eita says he was promised that once he was granted asylum, he would be able to apply for his children to be taken to France.
But he's still waiting, and there's too much time left for him to agonize over the impossible decision he's made.
“Fares was dying. If I had stayed, I would have lost him,” he said.
The Israeli offensive has injured more than 91,000 people since October 7, Gaza authorities said.
Among them, about 10 children in Gaza lose one or both legs every day, according to the UN agency for Palestine refugees.
Aspiring footballer Asef Abu Mhadi (12) is one of them.
He says he was playing soccer outside his home in the central Nuseirat refugee camp on October 16 when his neighborhood was hit and turned into rubble.
“I thought I had debris on my leg,” he said as he sat in a wheelchair with a Palestinian football scarf over his shoulder near a hospital on the outskirts of Paris.
“I sat down to remove it and found my leg cut off.
Asef was also flown to France for treatment with his mother, Raja Abdulkarim Abu Mhadi.
But Abu Mhadi, 47, who lost her husband when Asef was an infant, was not allowed to bring her other five children — Enas, 13, Aisha, 15, Ahmad, 17, Moayed, 18, and Mohammed, 20. .
The mother, who says she lost three nephews in the war, is also wracked with worry as she waits.