DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — He wouldn’t let him go.
Nael Al-Baghdadi embraced his 12-year-old son, Omar, and hugged him tightly. But it was too late. Omar, who was playing outdoors near his house, was killed on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip by an israeli airstrike.
In the photo taken by Associated Press photographer Abdel Kareem Hana after the attack, al-Baghdadi has his eyes closed. He holds his son, whose small body rests limply in his arms. His right hand and the right sleeve of his shirt are stained with blood. The pain is etched on the father’s face, but more than that there is an expression of deep love for the son he has just lost. So much love that he insisted on hugging Omar, without interruptions, until the boy could be taken hours later to his grave.
Omar and his three friends were playing soccer in the street near their home in the Bureij refugee camp around noon on Tuesday, under a scorching sun, when the Israeli airstrike hit and sent the street into a swirl of dust, blood and chaos. Al-Baghdadi was already at the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah with his wounded brother. His cousin ran to the rubble, found Omar and took him to an ambulance.
From there he called the father and gave him the news: his son had been murdered; Get ready to receive it. According to al-Baghdadi, he met the ambulance when he arrived at the hospital, picked up the body of his son and took it to the morgue, crying all the way.
She refused to put her son on the floor inside the morgue, gently holding him until he was shrouded and the funeral prayer was performed before a quick burial.
An image, a moment: a lost child, a father’s pain, an unbearable goodbye.
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