World
‘My children, my children’: The Gaza family killed minutes before ceasefire
Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Palestine – The ceasefire in Gaza was supposed to start at 8.30am (06:30 GMT). The al-Qidra family had endured 15 months of Israeli attacks. They had been displaced more than once and were living in a tent. Their relatives had been among the more than 46,900 Palestinians killed by Israel.
But the al-Qidras had survived. And they wanted to go home.
Ahmed al-Qidra packed his seven children onto a donkey cart and headed to eastern Khan Younis. It was finally safe to travel – the bombing should have stopped.
But the family did not know that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas had been delayed. They did not know that, even in those additional few hours, Israeli aircraft were still flying over the skies of Gaza, ready to drop their bombs.
The explosion was loud. Ahmed’s wife Hanan heard it. She had stayed behind at a relative’s home in the centre of the city, organising their belongings, planning on joining her husband and children a few hours later.
“The blast felt like it hit my heart,” Hanan said. She instinctively knew that something had happened to her children, whom she had only just said goodbye to.
“My children, my children!” she screamed.
The cart had been hit. Hanan’s eldest son, 16-year-old Adly, was dead. So was her youngest, six-year-old Sama, the baby of the family.
Yasmin, 12, explained that a four-wheel drive was in front of the cart carrying people celebrating the ceasefire. Perhaps that was the reason the missile hit.
“I saw Sama and Adly lying on the ground, and my father bleeding and unconscious on the cart,” Yasmin said. She pulled her eight-year-old sister Aseel out before a second missile hit the spot where they had been. Eleven-year-old Mohammed also survived.
But Ahmed, Hanan’s partner in life, was pronounced dead in the hospital.
‘My children were my world’
Sitting on the edge of her injured daughter Iman’s hospital bed in Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, Hanan was still shell-shocked.
“Where was the ceasefire?” she asked. In their excitement to finally return to whatever was left of their home, the family had missed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring that the Palestinian group Hamas had not sent over the names of the three Israeli captives who would be released on Sunday as part of the ceasefire deal.
They had not seen Hamas explain that there were technical reasons for the delay, and that the names would be provided, as they eventually were.
They would not know that in the three-hour delay before the ceasefire eventually began, three members of their family would be killed. They were among the 19 Palestinians killed by Israel in those last few hours, according to Gaza’s Civil Defence.
Hanan broke down in tears. She would now have to face life without her husband and without two of her children. The loss of Sama, “the last of the bunch” as she described her with the Arabic saying, was particularly hard.
“Sama was my youngest and the most spoiled. She’d get angry whenever I talked about having another child.”
Adly had been her “pillar of support”. Her children were her world.
“We endured this entire war, facing the harshest conditions of displacement and bombardment,” Hanan said. “My children dealt with hunger, a lack of food and basic necessities.”
“We survived more than a year of this war, only for them to be killed in its last minutes. How can this happen?”
A day of joy had been turned into a nightmare. The family had celebrated the end of the war the night before.
“Hasn’t the Israeli army had enough of our blood and the atrocities they committed for 15 months?” Hanan asked.
Then, she thought of her future. With her husband and two of her children ripped away from her, and with tears coming down her face, she asked: “What’s left?”
NEW YORK (AP) — This stowaway truly was sly as a fox.
A red fox somehow slipped onto a cargo ship that traveled from Southampton, England, to New York, where the animal is now in the Bronx Zoo’s care.
The zoo said Wednesday that the 11-pound (5-kilogram) male fox appears healthy after early examinations.
“He seems to be settling in well,” Keith Lovett, the zoo’s director of animal programs, said by phone. “It’s gone through a lot.”
It’s not clear how the animal got on the ship full of automobiles, which left Southampton on Feb. 4, according to the zoo. The ship arrived Feb. 18 at the Port of New York and New Jersey, and officials brought the fox to the zoo the next day. He’s estimated to be 2 years old.
AP AUDIO: A red fox stows away on a cargo ship, traveling from England to US
AP correspondent Julie Walker reports a fox stows away on cargo ship and travels from England to US.
Zoo representatives weren’t sure how and when the fox was discovered. Messages seeking those details were sent to government agencies involved with the port.
The species, formally named Vulpes vulpes, is widespread in Europe, Asia, North America and parts of Africa. A long-term home for this fox will be found once he clears some more health screening.
For now, he’s in the zoo’s veterinary center. Being an omnivore, he’s getting a diet of produce, proteins and some biscuit-like items.
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Spain permanently pulled its ambassador to Israel on Tuesday over its opposition to the U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran, ratcheting up an already tense diplomatic rift between the two countries.
The Spanish government formally terminated the ambassador’s post in its official gazette and said its embassy in Tel Aviv will now be led by a chargé d’affaires indefinitely.
Madrid had recalled its ambassador last September after Israel condemned Spain’s decision to block aircraft and ships carrying weapons to Israel from using Spanish ports or airspace. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the move antisemitic at the time.
When a reporter on Wednesday asked whether Spain, in general, was cooperating with the U.S., President Donald Trump replied, “No, they’re not. I think they’re not cooperating at all.”
WORLD LEADERS SPLIT OVER MILITARY ACTION AS US-ISRAEL STRIKE IRAN IN COORDINATED OPERATION
People walk past damaged buildings following a strike on a police station, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 4, 2026. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS)
“Spain, I think they’ve been very bad,” the president said. “Very bad. Not good at all. We may cut off trade with Spain.”
“I don’t know what Spain is doing,” Trump continued. “They’ve been very bad to NATO. They get protected, they don’t want to pay their fair share. And they’ve been that way for many years.”
Trump added that the people of Spain “are fantastic,” whereas the leadership is “not so good.”
TRUMP PRESSES NATO PARTNERS ON SUPPORT AS HEGSETH BLASTS HESITATION
President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Wednesday criticized Spain’s decision to recall its ambassador to Israel permanently as “hard for me to absorb.”
“Spain is a member of NATO, and the United States and Israel are in joint operations against the Iranian regime who openly calls for the destruction of the Jewish State, attacks against the West, and seeks to purify Islam in its own image,” Graham wrote on X.
Spain recalled its ambassador to Israel, the latest flare-up in the rocky diplomatic relationship between the two countries in recent years. (Reuters/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo)
“The religious Nazi regime in Iran is the problem, not the Jewish State,” the senator continued. “I hope Spain’s actions will not encourage the tyrannical, fanatical regime in Iran — that abuses its own people — to hang on.”
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Relations between Spain and Israel have deteriorated sharply since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.
Israel also downgraded its diplomatic presence in Spain last May after Spain recognized a Palestinian state, placing its own embassy in Madrid under a chargé d’affaires.
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The European Union is bracing itself for potentially major repercussions as the Iran war persists, with Brussels urged to intervene to cushion the economic impact on consumers and secure energy supplies.
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But beyond the immediate concerns, the war is also raising existential questions about the EU’s foreign policy and its place in an increasingly dangerous and chaotic world.
In this context, Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) Antonio López-Istúriz, of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), and Daniel Attard of the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) stepped into The Ring to defend their views on the EU’s response to the conflict.
Both MEPs are aligned in their condemnation of the Tehran regime and believe that the EU has to continue to support the Iranian people calling for change.
MEP Attard believes that reports of Iranian mine-laying ships in the critical Strait of Hormuz indicate that the regime is severely weakened and facing its moment of reckoning.
MEP López-Istúriz says the EU must firmly stand by its democratic allies — including the US and Israel — rejecting the “narrative” of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who has firmly condemned the US-Israeli attacks on Iran as a violation of international law and the values that the EU holds dear.
This episode of The Ring is anchored by Mared Gwyn Jones, produced by Luis Albertos and Amaia Echevarria, and edited by Vassilis Glynos.
Watch The Ring on Euronews TV or in the player above and send us your views by writing to thering@euronews.com.
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