(17 Jul 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
++PLEASE NOTE THIS EDIT CONTAINS FOOTAGE OF INFANT KILLED IN ISRAELI AIRSTRIKE++
++CLIENTS NOTE: STORYLINE UPDATED AT 18:27 GMT ON 17 JULY 2024++
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Deir al-Balah, Central Gaza Strip – 16 July 2024
1. Mahmoud Mikdad, accompanied by young relatives, holding lifeless body of his baby son Yaman, who was killed in Israeli airstrike UPSOUND (Arabic) "What is his fault, Oh God? What is his fault?"
2. Various of Mikdad holding and caressing his baby son’s body outside morgue UPSOUND (Arabic) “My love, my son…” as the young relatives try to comfort him and cry with him
3. Various of the feet of baby Yaman
4. Mikdad holding body of baby Yaman, crying UPSOUND (Arabic) “I love him, I swear I love him!”
5. Close of Mikdad crying
6. Mikdad holding body of his baby son
7. Mikdad stroking his son’s hair and kissing him
8. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mahmoud Mikdad, father of baby killed in airstrike:
“Stop the war, enough. We lose our most valuable people. We lose the most valuable people. He was a child, what is his guilt? He is more valuable to me than all Arab people. He was more valuable than the whole world. You are my love…”
9. Various of Mikdad holding body of his baby son outside morgue
10. Various of people saying funeral prayers for baby Yaman, his body wrapped in burial shroud
STORYLINE:
The dead Palestinian toddler’s limbs were pale and cold despite the sweltering summer heat in Gaza. Outside the hospital, his father cradled the boy in his arms, unable or unwilling to say goodbye. Flies circled and landed in the child’s soft hair.
“What did he do wrong, my God? What did he do wrong?” screamed Mahmoud Mikdad, his voice hoarse, lifting his face toward the sky.
His son, Yaman, was killed by an Israeli airstrike. Israeli strikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza from Monday night into Tuesday, according to hospital records and health officials. Israel has said it is pursuing Hamas militants who are hiding among civilians after offensives uprooted underground tunnel networks.
It had been a regular afternoon for Mikdad. He put his daughter and Yamam down for a nap in the apartment where the displaced family was sheltering.
The strike killed the boy instantly. He wasn’t yet 2 years old.
Mikdad carried Yamam’s body through central Gaza from Nuseirat camp to Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah. Yamam’s bare legs dangled limply from beneath a white sheet soaked with blood.
Mikdad and two others, one with his head wrapped in bandages, caressed and kissed the boy’s body outside the morgue. The child in his lap was “more precious than the whole world,” Mikdad told an Associated Press photojournalist. He sat against the hospital wall for a while, crying.
Later, a dozen or so men held a funeral prayer over Yamam’s body wrapped in a white shroud. Bystanders, some of them children, watched in silence.
AP video by Abd Al Kareem Hana
Produced by Wafaa Shurafa
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