A Gaza medic realizes he is carrying the body of his mother, killed in an Israeli airstrike.

DEIR AL-BALA, Gaza — A Palestinian emergency worker made a horrifying discovery when a bloody sheet was lifted: the body on a stretcher was that of his own mother, killed in an Israeli airstrike Wednesday in the center of the Gaza Strip.

“Oh God, I swear she’s my mother! I didn’t know it was her!” Abed Bardini sobbed as he bent over his mother Samira, holding her head in his hands. Fellow Red Crescent doctors tried to console him.

Bardini, unknowingly, sat in the ambulance next to her body, wrapped in a white sheet stained with dark blood, as the vehicle drove along rutted roads for about 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) towards the Al-Martyrs Hospital. Aksy in Deir el-Balah.

Three people were killed and at least 10 wounded in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in the Magazi refugee camp, according to Palestinian health officials and Associated Press journalists. Health officials at the hospital said two of the dead were men sitting in the car, and the explosion fatally wounded 61-year-old Samira Bardini as she stood nearby.

Abed Bardini was in one of two ambulances sent to the scene. Back at the hospital, he unloaded the stretcher with practiced professionalism, squinting in the midday sun as he wheeled the body across the hospital yard.

Inside, medical staff pulled back the blanket to check for signs of life, and Bardini’s strength gave out.

Later, when his tears had dried up, he sat in the morgue next to Samira’s body, head in his hands, and was comforted by Red Crescent colleagues. A funeral service was held over her body in the parking lot, then Bardini personally helped carry the body to the ambulance for burial.

An Israeli military spokesman did not immediately comment on the strike. Israel says it carries out precision strikes in the Gaza Strip targeting Palestinian militants and is careful not to harm civilians. But women and children often die as a result of strikes.

Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war. Israel’s retaliatory war in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. Gaza’s health ministry said on Wednesday that 102 deaths had been recorded in the past 24 hours.

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Associated Press writer Jack Jeffrey in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed.