RENNES, France: When Israeli airstrikes hit his neighborhood early in the Gaza war, Palestinian social worker Tareq Abu Eita, 42, saw his whole life turned upside down in seconds.
The October 14 bombing blew through the walls of his two-story family home.
It killed his 77-year-old father Hamed, his wife of 15 years Muntaha, 37, and his 11-year-old son Ilyas.
It 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 running down his cheek in the French city of Rennes, after showing AFP photos of his wedding and late son grinning on his phone.
He and another son, 14-year-old Fares, are among just a handful of Palestinians injured in the war who have been flown over to France for specialized medical treatment.
The latest Gaza war started after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP report using Israeli figures.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 39,550 people, according to health authorities in the territory, which did not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
“It's not just numbers,” Abu Eita said.
“Each of these people 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 both were badly injured.
Fares suffered a large skull fracture that put him in a coma for more than three weeks.
Nine months later, with Israeli forces still pounding the ravaged Gaza Strip, both are recovering in France after extensive medical care.
But Abu Eita is terrified that he could now also lose two other sons he was forced to leave behind without a mother in the besieged area: 10-year-old Jud and 15-year-old Ahmad.
“It will be a disaster if anything happens to them,” the father said.
“I really couldn't take it.”
Abu Eita says he has been promised that as soon as he receives asylum he will be able to apply to bring his children to France.
But he's still waiting, giving him too much time to regret the impossible choice he made.
“Fares was dying. If I had stayed, I would have lost him,” he said.
Israel's offensive has injured more than 91,000 people since October 7, Gaza authorities say.
Among these, about 10 children in Gaza lose one or both legs every day, says the UN agency for Palestine refugees.
Aspiring soccer player Asef Abu Mhadi, 12, 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 it was garbage on my leg,” he said, sitting in a wheelchair with a Palestinian soccer scarf over his shoulder near a hospital in a Paris suburb.
“I sat up to remove it and I found my leg was severed.”
Asef was also flown to France for treatment with his mother Raja Abdulkarim Abu Mhadi.
But Abu Mhadi, a 47-year-old who lost her husband when Asef was an infant, was not allowed to bring her other five children – Enas, 13, Aisha, 15, Ahmad, 17, Moayed, 18 and Mohammed, 20.
The mother, who says she has lost three nephews in the war, is also wracked with worry as she waits.
