Born a month ago as the conflict raged around him, baby Idres Al-Dbari had been living in a tent in Rafah, southern Gaza, with his displaced family when he along his mother Wafaa were killed by an Israeli air strike overnight, Reuters reports.

Among the bereaved relatives with bowed heads surrounding the dead was Um Zeyad al-Dbari, grandmother of Idres, who gently unwrapped the top of the shroud so that she could see his face and stroke his soft black hair as she cradled him.

Baby Idres was wrapped in a white shroud and a light blue blanket with dots, his grandmother holding his tiny body close to her chest and weeping uncontrollably as she knelt next to a row of corpses lined up on the floor of a Gaza hospital.

“The boy was born early in the war, early, he was born a little over a month ago,” she said, her voice high-pitched from weeping and her despair showing on her face. “My love,” she said, kissing Idres’s forehead before repeating “my love” in a near-whisper.

Idres’s body was placed on top of that of his mother, whose shroud was inscribed with the words “the martyr Wafaa Al-Dbari” and the date of her death, December 12, 2023.

The grandmother of Palestinian baby Idres Al-Dbari, who was born during the conlfict and killed in an Israeli strike, and a relative react at Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip December 12
The grandmother of Palestinian baby Idres Al-Dbari, who was born during the conlfict and killed in an Israeli strike, and a relative react at Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip December 12

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