Israel Firebombed Family Home Where Children Were Sleeping In Latest Killing Spree

By Abdel Qader Sabbah|Wikimedia Commons

Photos: Abdel Qader Sabbah

GAZA CITY—The charred shell of the Al-Masri family home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City was still smoldering on Tuesday afternoon, hours after the Israel military bombed it, killing Firas and Salsabeel al-Masri and their four children—Faryal, Salma, Amira and Naim—as they slept.

The airstrike came without warning in the middle of the night, destroying the upper floor of the simple two-story structure and setting it ablaze. “We were asleep in the middle of the night, at around 2 a.m. or so, when we heard a huge explosion,” Abu Youssef Al-Masri, the children’s grandfather, told Drop Site as he stood in front of the partially collapsed home. “We realized the house had been struck. The house collapsed and caught fire.”

The fire spared nothing inside, family belongings burnt to ash lay among broken cinder blocks, the walls that remained standing blackened with soot.

“The house burned completely. It was my brother’s home—he, his wife, and their four children. Burned until it was charred. My brother’s entire family has been erased,” Mohammed Al-Masri, the brother of Firas, said. “They burned before our eyes and we couldn’t do anything.” He spoke standing at the graveyard where the family of six were buried on Tuesday afternoon.

The bodies were carried by relatives wrapped in white shrouds through the rubble-strewn cemetery to be laid to rest. Abu Youssef stood in the middle of the shallow graves and placed the small body of his granddaughter, Amira, next to her mother as Israeli drones buzzed incessantly overhead. “The whole world is watching us,” Mohammed said. “There is no ceasefire in effect, the war hasn’t stopped, and no one cares about us.”

Relatives bury Firas and Salsabeel al-Masri and their four children after they were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Gaza City on July 21, 2026. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.

The attack on Tuesday came amid a particularly brutal and escalated Israeli assault across Gaza over the past several days as the world’s attention has been distracted by the renewed U.S. war with Iran. Daily airstrikes, shelling, quadcopter attacks, and shootings have targeted residential buildings, tent encampments, civilian vehicles, a funeral procession, a police station, and a hospital-turned-shelter, killing dozens of Palestinians across the enclave over the past week alone. At the same time, Israeli ground troops have been pushing further into Gaza, steadily extending the “yellow line” westward, taking more land, and driving the Palestinian population onto an ever-shrinking territory.

“It’s not simply that the resumption of the war in Iran provides cover, it’s also the fact that the war has largely been a failure from an Israeli perspective, and the Israeli state will look to compensate for this failure elsewhere before a new regional balance takes shape,” Nasser Abourahme, a professor of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at Bowdoin College, told Drop Site. “It’s most important to remember that the genocide itself has both stalled and never stopped. For all the horrific and unprecedented destruction and death, Israel hasn’t yet achieved any of its core aims: the ethnic cleansing of the Strip, the disarming of the resistance factions, or the resettlement of the Strip.”

The latest killing spree has brought the Palestinian death toll in Gaza since a so-called ceasefire went into effect in October 2025 to 1,180—including over 250 children—with 127 being killed in the first three weeks of July. Over 3,800 have been injured. The total recorded death toll since Israel launched its genocidal assault in October 2023 is now over 73,300 killed, with nearly 174,000 injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

On Monday, an Israeli airstrike slammed into the Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital building in the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing at least four people and wounding several more. Like many hospitals in Gaza, the facility entirely ceased functioning during the war and is instead being used primarily as a shelter for displaced Palestinians.

“I went out to visit my friend near Al-Yemen Al-Saeed and suddenly there was a very large explosion, two consecutive explosions,” Youssef Akasha, an eyewitness who was just meters away from the attack, told Drop Site as he stood outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City where the dead and wounded were being brought. Bloodied children were carried out of ambulances while bodies wrapped in blankets were put on gurneys. “The children were having fun, playing football, and suddenly they started screaming. We went directly to Al-Yemen Al-Saeed…we found the place destroyed and children were lying on the ground, women screaming, and men running to rescue the wounded.”

One of the worst attacks came on Friday, when Israel bombed a funeral procession outside the Ahmed Yassin Mosque in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least eight mourners as they gathered to bury a man killed just hours earlier. Bodies lay strewn on the blood-soaked ground. One man was blown in half, his legs torn off his body as crowds of people screaming on the street tried to rescue the wounded. At Al-Awda hospital, injured children lay wide-eyed and silent on hospital beds as doctors rushed to treat them. One man knelt and embraced a bloodied corpse lying on a gurney, unable to let go.

“It was a very big attack and there was a large number of martyrs,” Medhat Saleh, an eyewitness who was wounded in his right arm, told Drop Site. “We couldn’t have imagined they would bomb a funeral of this size. Many children, women, and men…A massacre in every sense of the word. The people were piled on top of each other, torn apart.” He continued, “It’s gotten much, much worse. In recent days, this has become a daily occurrence.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Thameen Al-Kheetan, made note of the escalated Israel assault in a statement on Tuesday. “The Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians—children, women and men…Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” Kheetan said, noting that the UN had documented 57 Palestinians killed between July 13 and July 20 alone. “Meanwhile, the Palestinian population in Gaza remains trapped in an ever-shrinking area, with the ‘yellow line’ constantly being moved westwards by the Israeli occupying power, presenting a continuous threat to life as the Israeli military appears to routinely fire on Palestinians for mere presence in the vicinity of that line…The violations, the suffering and the misery that continue to be imposed on the Palestinians in Gaza cannot be ignored.”

As part of the October 2025 agreement, Israeli troops withdrew to the “yellow line,” a boundary running roughly parallel to the coastline and cutting off large swathes of north and south Gaza, that gave Israel control of 53% of the enclave. The move was supposed to mark the beginning of an eventual phased withdrawal back to a “buffer zone” at the border with Israel. Yet over the past nine months, the Israeli military has instead steadily pushed further westward in areas along the yellow line, taking more Palestinian land and placing yellow concrete blocks in some places to indicate their new line of control, which is now estimated to encompass closer to 70% of Gaza, according to Israeli military officials.

“The escalation of the killing, the expansion of the so-called yellow line in new land grabs, and the agitation of politicians and the settler movement for renewed Jewish settlement in Gaza all point to the fact that Israel’s endgame remains the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and its full conquest one way or another,” Abourahme said. “At the end of the day, the so-called ceasefire didn’t stop the genocide, it only modulated its tempo and intensity.”

For the past several days, Israeli ground troops have launched a sustained attack on areas near the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, including aerial bombing, shooting, and shelling attacks, razing land with bulldozers, and issuing displacement orders to force residents to flee their homes and shelters and drive them eastward.

“Today, they moved the yellow line here. The day before, they bombed the area, so we left. We spent one more night at home, then we had to leave,” Umm Salem Dawla, a resident displaced from the area, told Drop Site. “We gathered our belongings and left them at the camp. I keep saying I’ll go and sit by the cemetery. What can I tell you? What kind of life is this?”

On Wednesday, the troops pulled back and residents in the area found yellow concrete blocks placed at the Dawlah junction on Salah al-Din street—the main north-south thoroughfare running the length of the enclave.

The Israeli military forced residents to flee from the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City and placed yellow blocks on Salah al-Din street on July 22, 2026. Video by Abdel Qader Sabbah.

“The Israelis started shelling the area, tanks started firing at us and at our home so we fled because the situation was extremely difficult…the tanks are always visible in the street, firing at our homes, and the quadcopters are constantly overhead. They don’t leave us alone. Twenty four hours a day there is shelling and gunfire,” Assem Dawla, another displaced resident of Zeitoun, said. “As you can see, we’re now taking out our belongings and leaving because the occupation has advanced the yellow line to Salah al-Din street. There is no longer any possibility of life here. Life in Zeitoun has been wiped out. There is no hope left and no way to live here anymore.”

The Israeli military’s encroachment to the Dawlah junction in effect prevents Palestinians in this area of Gaza City from accessing Salah al-Din road and the rest of the enclave further south.

“My fear is that all of Gaza will end up inside the occupation’s new boundaries. Netanyahu is now talking about taking 67% to 70% of the Gaza Strip, but I believe he wants to control all of it. There won’t be anywhere left for us. We’ll all be living under the control and domination of the Israeli army,” Dawla said. “The war is not over. We’re still living in a state of fear, greater even than when the war was ongoing.”

Sami Vanderlip edited the videos for this report.