He was speaking from Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, where he and his family took refuge in an apartment during Israel’s months-long offensive in the Palestinian-owned territory.
Abu al-Khomsan said he was initially told only that his wife and children were at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
But the worst was to come when he found out: the children he and his wife had welcomed into the world just four days earlier were murdered, along with their mother, Dr. Jumana Arafa, and the twins’ maternal grandmother.
Video footage shared on social media showed the father collapsing crying into the arms of a carer, clutching the twins’ birth certificates, as people crowded around to try to comfort him.
Asel and Aisal @mohammed.madhi89 / Instagram
Later that day, video captured by an NBC News crew showed him mourning with loved ones as the bodies of family members lay covered in bodies.
“I swear they went to heaven before you,” one man can be heard telling the grieving father. “Today we buried a woman and her husband.”
Arafa, a pharmacist, gave birth to twins by Caesarean section on Saturday, the Associated Press reported.
Alkomasan told NBC News that he and his wife did all they could to stay safe during the Israeli attack, hoping for the twins to be born safely.
The final post, believed to be on Arafa’s Facebook page, dated August 10, announces the birth of the twins with heart emojis around their names.
The post has been shared more than 21,000 times since Tuesday, with friends of the family and social media users mourning their loss.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said in a statement that Israeli artillery fire hit an apartment block in the area on Tuesday.
In a statement Wednesday, the IDF told NBC News that “the details of the incident that were made public are not currently known to the IDF.”
