Gaza Father Detained by Israel for Two Years Returns Home to Find Six of His Seven Children Dead

Ahmed al-Siqali said goodbye to his seven children a week before October 7, 2023, expecting to be gone for a few weeks of construction work in Israel. He did not see most of them again.

Al-Siqali, a Palestinian labourer, was stranded in the occupied West Bank when Israel sealed the crossings into Gaza after the war began. On December 8, 2023, he managed a brief call to his family sheltering in Gaza City's al-Sahaba neighbourhood. Minutes after the line cut out, a relative called to tell him the house had been bombed, according to al-Siqali's account given to Middle East Eye.

Six of his children were killed in the strike: Mohammed, Muhannad, twins Kinan and Rayan, Basant, and two-month-old Eileen, whom he had only met once. His wife and one daughter, Rosan, survived the rubble with injuries.

Nearly two years of separation, then detention

Al-Siqali remained trapped in the West Bank for almost two years, unable to reach Gaza as the crossings stayed shut. On July 21, Israeli forces raided a compound in Qalqilya where he was staying with other Gaza labourers and detained him along with the group.

He was held for two weeks at Ofer prison. Al-Siqali told Middle East Eye he was tortured and humiliated during that time, saying every moment he wished for death. Middle East Eye's reporting does not detail the specific methods alleged, and Occupation Watch has not independently verified the claim.

He was eventually handcuffed and blindfolded for a four-hour transfer to the Kerem Shalom crossing, then handed to the Red Cross and taken to Nasser Hospital along with 23 other released workers.

A homecoming built on dread

By his own account, al-Siqali spent his months of captivity replaying videos of a family beach trip taken just before he left Gaza, and thinking about a house he had bought near the sea in al-Sudaniya so his children could grow up close to the water. He said Mohammed and Muhannad had wanted a shared room, and that Kinan, Rayan and Basant had dreamed of outings with their father.

When he was finally released back into Gaza, he described being unable to walk, terrified not of returning but of facing his wife and Rosan without the other six.

Middle East Eye's reporting cites a United Nations figure that more than 21,000 children have been killed across Gaza and the West Bank since the war began, though the specific UN document was not named in the source material and the figure should be treated as a widely cited but not independently re-verified statistic in this piece.

Al-Siqali's case has not been the subject of an independent Israeli military inquiry disclosed in available reporting, and Occupation Watch has not confirmed the strike's attribution beyond the family's account and contextual reporting from Gaza City during that period of the war.