Rennes, France: When Israeli airstrikes struck his neighborhood in the early days of the Gaza War, Tareq Abu Eita, then 42, a Palestinian social worker, saw his entire life turned upside down in a matter of seconds.
The shelling on October 14th destroyed the walls of his two-story home.
The accident killed 77-year-old father Hamed, his 37-year-old wife of 15 years Muntaha, and his 11-year-old son Ilias.
It also claimed the lives of his two nieces, eight-year-old Mira and 14-year-old Tala.
“Everything is gone,” Abu Eita told AFP in Rennes, France, as tears streamed down her cheeks after showing AFP photos from her wedding and a photo on her mobile phone of her deceased son smiling.
He and his 14-year-old son, Fares, are among a small number of war-wounded Palestinians who have been flown to France for specialist medical treatment.
The latest Gaza war began after Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7, killing 1,197 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli figures compiled by AFP.
According to local health officials, at least 39,550 people were killed in the Israeli offensive, though the civilian and militant death toll was not disclosed.
“It’s not just about numbers,” Abu Eita said.
“Each of these humans had loved ones, families, and memories.”
He and his son Fares were outside their home in the northern Jabalia refugee camp after receiving a water delivery when the airstrikes began, and both were badly injured.
Paris suffered a massive skull fracture and was in a coma for more than three weeks.
Nine months later, Israeli forces are still shelling the devastated Gaza Strip, and both men are recovering in France after receiving extensive medical care.
But Abu Eita is terrified that she could lose her two sons, Jude, 10, and Ahmad, 15, who she left behind in the besieged area without their mother.
“If something happened to them it would be a disaster,” the father said.
“I really couldn't cope.”
Abu Eita said she was promised that she would be able to apply to bring her children to France as soon as she was granted asylum.
But he's still waiting, and he's had too much time to ponder the impossible choice he's made.
“Fares was dying. If I had stayed, I would have lost him,” he said.
According to Gaza authorities, more than 91,000 people have been injured since October 7 in Israeli offensives.
According to the United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency, about 10 children in the Gaza Strip lose one or both legs every day.
Assef Abu Mahdi, an aspiring 12-year-old soccer player, is one of them.
He said he was playing soccer outside his home in the central Nusseirat refugee camp on October 16 when his neighborhood was bombed and reduced to rubble.
“I thought I had shrapnel in my leg,” he said, sitting in a wheelchair near a hospital outside Paris with a Palestinian football scarf draped around his shoulders.
“I sat up to try to remove it and discovered that my leg had been severed.”
Assef was also transferred to France for treatment along with his mother, Raja Abdulkareem Abu Mahdi.
But Abu Mahdi, 47, who lost her husband when Assef was a toddler, was unable to bring her other five children: Enas, 13, Aisha, 15, Ahmad, 17, Moayed, 18, and Mohammed, 20.
Her mother, who lost three nephews in the war, is also worried as she waits.
