Rennes, France: When Israeli airstrikes hit his neighborhood at the start of the Gaza war, Palestinian social activist Tarek Abu Ita, 42, saw his entire life upheaval in seconds.
The October 14 bombing destroyed the walls of his two-story family home.
His 77-year-old father Hamed, his 15-year-old wife Muntaha, 37, and his 11-year-old son Ilyas died.
It also killed her two nieces, eight-year-old Meera and 14-year-old Tala.
“It's all over,” Abu Eita said, tears streaming down his cheeks in the French city of Rennes, after AFP showed him a smiling phone picture of his wedding and his late son.
He and another son, 14-year-old Fares, are among the few Palestinians wounded in the war who have been flown to France for specialized medical treatment.
The latest Gaza war began on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,197 people, most of them civilians, according to AFP figures from Israeli statistics.
Israel's retaliatory strikes have killed at least 39,550 people, according to health officials in the region, who did not provide details of civilian and militant deaths.
“It's not just a number,” Abu Ita said.
“All these human beings had their loved ones, their families, their memories.”
He and his son Fares were outside their home when the strike took place after receiving a water delivery to the northern Jabaliya refugee camp, and both were seriously injured.
Fares suffered a massive skull fracture that left him in a coma for more than three weeks.
Nine months later, with Israeli forces still attacking the devastated Gaza Strip, both are recovering after extensive medical care in France.
But Abu Eita fears he may now lose the two other sons he was forced to leave without a mother in the besieged area: 10-year-old Jude and 15-year-old Ahmed.
“It would be a disaster if anything happened to them,” the father said.
“I really couldn't cope.”
Abu Ita says that as soon as he is granted asylum, he will be able to apply to bring his children to France.
But he's still waiting, leaving her plenty of time to agonize over the impossible choice she's made.
“The tenants were dying. If I had stayed, I would have lost him,” he said.
More than 91,000 people have been injured in Israeli attacks since Oct. 7, Gaza officials said.
Among them, about 10 children lose one or both legs every day in Gaza, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Asif Abu Mhadi, a 12-year-old aspiring football player, is one of them.
He says he was playing soccer outside his home in the central Nusirat refugee camp on Oct. 16 when it crashed into his neighborhood, reducing it to rubble.
“I thought I had rubble on my leg,” he said, sitting in a wheelchair with a Palestinian football scarf around his shoulders near a Paris suburban hospital.
“I got up to take it off and I realized my leg had been cut.”
Assef was also flown to France for treatment along with his mother, Raja Abdulkarim Abu Mahdi.
But 47-year-old Abu Mhadi, who lost her husband when Asef was a child, was not allowed to bring her five other children – 13-year-old Inas, 15-year-old Aisha, 17-year-old Ahmed, 18-year-old Moed and 20-year-old Mohammad. .
The mother, who lost three nephews in the war, is also worried while waiting.
