RENNES, France: When Israeli airstrikes hit his neighborhood at the start of the Gaza war, Palestinian social worker Tareq Abu Eita, 42, saw his entire life turned upside down in seconds.
The bombing on October 14 exploded in the walls of his two-story family home.
He killed his father Hamed, 77, his wife of 15 years, Muntaha, 37, and his son Ilyas, 11.
He also took the lives of his two nieces, eight-year-old Mira and 14-year-old Tala.
“Everything is gone,” said Abu Eita, a tear streaming down his cheek in the French city of Rennes, after showing AFP pictures of his wedding and his late son smiling on the phone.
He and another son, Fares, 14, are among just a few Palestinians wounded in the war who have been flown to France for specialist medical treatment.
The latest war in Gaza began after Hamas on October 7 attacked Israel, killing 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an Israeli source told AFP.
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 the northern Jabalia refugee camp after receiving a water delivery when the strikes hit and they were both seriously injured.
Fares suffered a large skull fracture that left him in a coma for more than three weeks.
Nine months later, with Israeli forces still pounding the devastated Gaza Strip, both are recovering in France after extensive medical care.
But Abu Eita is terrified that he may now also lose two other sons he was forced to leave motherless in the besieged territory: Jud, 10, and Ahmad, 15.
“It will be a disaster if anything happens to them,” the father said.
“I really couldn't handle it.”
Abu Eita says she was promised that as soon as she was granted asylum, she would be able to apply to bring her children to France.
But he's still waiting, leaving him with too much time to agonize over the impossible choice he's made.
“Fares was dying. If I had stayed, I would have lost it,” he said.
Israel's offensive has injured more than 91,000 people since October 7, Gaza authorities say.
Of these, about 10 children in Gaza lose one or both legs every day, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees says.
Aspiring footballer Asef Abu Mhadi, 12 years old, 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, reducing it to rubble.
“I thought there was debris on my leg,” he said, sitting in a wheelchair with a Palestinian soccer scarf over his shoulder outside a hospital in suburban Paris.
“I got up to take it off and found that my leg had been cut.”
Asef was also flown to France for treatment with his mother, Raja Abdulkarim Abu Mhadi.
But Abu Mhadi, a 47-year-old woman who lost her husband when Asef was a baby, was not allowed to bring her five other children – Enas, 13, Aisha, 15, Ahmad, 17, Moayed , 18 years old and Mohammed, 20 years old. .
The mother, who says she lost three grandchildren in the war, is also wracked with worry as she waits.
