RENNES, France: When Israeli airstrikes hit his neighborhood at the start of the Gaza war, Palestinian social worker Tareq Abu Eita, 42, saw his life turned upside down in seconds.
The October 14 bombing blew out the walls of his two-story family home.
His father Hamed, 77, his wife Muntaha, 37, to whom he had been married for 15 years, and his son Ilyas, 11, lost their lives.
Her two granddaughters, eight-year-old Mira and 14-year-old Tala, also lost their lives.
“It's all over,” Abu Eita said, a tear rolling down his cheek in the French city of Rennes, after showing AFP photos of his wedding and his deceased son smiling on his phone.
He and another son, Fares, 14, are among the few Palestinians wounded in the war who have been flown to France for specialized medical treatment.
The latest war in Gaza began after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an Israeli tally by the AFP news agency.
According to the territory's health authorities, Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 39,550 people, but it provides no details on civilian and militant casualties.
“These are not just numbers,” Abu Eita said.
“Each of these human beings had their loved ones, their family, their memories.”
He and his son Fares were outside their home in Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the country after receiving a water delivery when the attacks occurred, and were both seriously injured.
Fares suffered a serious skull fracture that kept him in a coma for more than three weeks.
Nine months later, as Israeli forces continue to pound the devastated Gaza Strip, both are recovering in France after receiving extensive medical care.
But Abu Eita is terrified that he may also lose his other two children he was forced to leave motherless in the besieged territory: Jud, 10, and Ahmad, 15.
“It would be a disaster if something happened to them,” the father said.
“I just couldn't do it.”
Abu Eita says he has been promised that as soon as he is granted asylum, he will be able to apply to take his children to France.
But he's still waiting, and that leaves him too much time to agonize over the impossible choice he's made.
“Fares was dying. If I had stayed, I would have lost him,” he said.
According to Gaza authorities, the Israeli offensive has caused more than 91,000 injuries since October 7.
Among them, about 10 children a day in Gaza lose one or both legs, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees says.
One of them is aspiring footballer Asef Abu Mhadi, 12.
He says that on October 16, he was playing football outside his home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the city center when his neighborhood was hit, reducing it to rubble.
“I thought I had debris on my leg,” he said, sitting in a wheelchair with a Palestinian soccer scarf draped over his shoulder near a hospital on the outskirts of Paris.
“I sat down to remove it and found that my leg had been amputated.”
Asef was flown to France to receive treatment from his mother Raja Abdulkarim Abu Mhadi.
But Abu Mhadi, a 47-year-old woman 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 lost three grandchildren in the war, is also anguished as she waits.
