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'What Did My Son Do To Die Like This': A Father Mourns His 11-Month-Old Son

Jihad Masharawi weeps while he holds the body of his 11-month old son Ahmad, at Shifa hospital following an Israeli air strike on their family house, in Gaza City on Wednesday.
Majed Hamdan
/
AP
Jihad Masharawi weeps while he holds the body of his 11-month old son Ahmad, at Shifa hospital following an Israeli air strike on their family house, in Gaza City on Wednesday.

The picture at the top of this post is quickly coming to represent the human suffering behind the fighting in Gaza.

The Washington Post used it on its front page this morning and it's moved quickly and widely through Twitter.

The attacks have killed 13 people in Gaza and three people in Israel, so far. This picture shows Jihad Misharawi, a BBC Arabic journalist, carrying the body of his 11-month-old son.

The BBC has posted video of an interview with a grieving Misharawi.

"What did my son do to die like this?" he asks, crying. "What was his mistake? He is 10 or 11 months old. What did he do?"

Paul Danahar, the BBC's Middle East bureau chief, tweeted that Misharawi's neighborhood in Gaza City was not under attack when a shell came through the roof of his home and hit the room where Misharawi's son, Ahmad, was. The baby along with with Misharawi's sister-in-law died.

Jihad Masharawi, a Palestinian employee of BBC Arabic in Gaza, mourns over the body of his 11-month-old son.
Mohammed Salem / Reuters /Landov
/
Reuters /Landov
Jihad Masharawi, a Palestinian employee of BBC Arabic in Gaza, mourns over the body of his 11-month-old son.

"[Question] asked here is: if Israel can kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last month) how did Jihad's son get killed?" Danahar said on twitter.

He adds that Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon tells the BBC that they apologize for civilian casualties, "but responsibility lies with Hamas."

Danahar also tweeted this photograph of Misharawi's son as a smiling, beautiful baby boy.

Update on March 12, 2013: We've added a new post about a United Nations investigation that found Ahmad was likely killed by an errant Palestinian rocket.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.