Rennes, France: When Israeli airstrikes hit his neighborhood early in the Gaza war, Palestinian social worker Tareq Abu Eita, 42, saw his life completely turned upside down in seconds.
The October 14 blast damaged the walls of his two-story home.
It killed his father, 77-year-old Hamed, his wife of 15 years, Muntaha, 37, and his 11-year-old son Elias.
It also killed two of his granddaughters, 8-year-old Mira and 14-year-old Tala.
“It's all gone,” Abu Eita said with tears streaming down his face in Rennes, France, after showing AFP photos of his wedding and his late son's smile.
He and his 14-year-old son, Fares, are among the few Palestinians injured in the war who have been sent to France for specialized medical treatment.
The latest Gaza war began after Hamas launched attacks on Israel on October 7, killing 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an Israeli tally by AFP.
Israeli retaliatory strikes have killed at least 39,550 people, according to local health officials, who did not provide details on civilian and combatant deaths.
“It’s not just about numbers,” Abu Eita said.
“Every human being has their own loved ones, their own family, and their own memories.”
He and his son, Fares, were outside their home in the northern Jabaliya refugee camp after being given a water delivery during the attack, and both were badly injured.
Fairs suffered a fractured skull that left him in a coma for more than three weeks.
Nine months after Israeli forces continued to pound the devastated Gaza Strip, the two are now recuperating in France after receiving intensive medical care.
But Abu Ita is terrified that he may now lose the two sons he was forced to leave without a mother in the besieged area: 10-year-old Jud and 15-year-old Ahmad.
“If anything happens to them, it will be a disaster,” said the father.
“I really can’t handle it.”
Abu Eita said he was promised that once he was granted refugee status, he would be able to apply to bring his children to France.
But he was still waiting, leaving him with too much time to worry about the impossible choice he had made.
“Fair is dying. If I was still alive, I would have lost him,” he said.
Gaza officials say Israeli strikes have injured more than 91,000 people since October 7.
About 10 children in Gaza are losing one or both legs every day, the UN's Palestine refugee agency says.
Asef Abu Mahadi, a 12-year-old rising football star, is one of them.
He said that on October 16, he was playing football outside his home in the Nusayrat refugee camp, a community in the middle, when his neighborhood was attacked and destroyed.
“I think I have some debris on my leg,” he said, sitting in a wheelchair with a Palestinian football scarf draped over his shoulder near a hospital in suburban Paris.
“I got up to take it off, but found that my leg had been cut off.”
In addition, Asef was sent to France for treatment along with his mother, Raja Abdul Karim Abu Mahadi.
But Abu Mhadi, 47, 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, and Mohammed, 20.
The mother, who said she lost three grandsons in the war, remains anxious as she waits.
