How indiscriminate Israeli fire killed half a family in Gaza

She almost died in an Israeli airstrike.

What happened to her family was a mystery.

CNN Special Report

By Abeer Salman, Mohammad Al Sawalhi, Benjamin Brown, Mick Krever, Jomana Karadsheh, Ivana Kottasová, Gianluca Mezzofiore, Carlotta Dotto, Byron Manley and Lou Robinson, CNN

Published February 28, 2024

The right side of Roba Abu Jibba’s face is almost completely gone – a deep, bloody wound is where her eye should be.

The 18-year-old, confused and in pain, lies on a gurney in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. She tries to explain how she got there. She had been sheltering with her family for two months in an industrial warehouse on Salaheddin Street, the strip’s main north-south highway, she explains, when they came under heavy fire from the Israeli military.

In a whisper, she recalls being shot at, explosions and bulldozing. She says she watched her brothers and sisters die around her. Her mother and three of her siblings were able to flee, but she’s not sure where they went.

After a chance encounter and the discovery of Roba’s identification card under rubble, a weeks-long CNN investigation has been able to piece together what happened during one terrifying night in early January, which left five of her siblings dead. Their story offers a window into the Israeli military’s overwhelming and often indiscriminate use of force in areas where civilians were told they would be safe, helping to uncover an atrocity that would otherwise have remained hidden.

Nearly two weeks after the attack, a group of residents combing through the destruction on Salaheddin Street came across a horrifying scene: at least eight people, including three children, all dead, huddled inside a collapsed warehouse. Those working to retrieve the bodies covered their faces, shielding themselves from flies and the smell of decomposing flesh.

Nobody knew who the people were – yet another group of unidentified victims among the nearly 30,000 Palestinians who have been killed since Israel launched its aerial bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’ October 7 terror attack.

CNN interviewed seven eyewitnesses to the attack, tracking down relatives now scattered across the enclave, including Roba’s mother. Their testimonies were cross-referenced with hospital records, satellite imagery and dozens of videos and photos from the scene, reviewed by forensics and ballistic experts, who analyzed the damage to the building and injuries of the people found inside of it.

Taken together, the evidence reveals how the Abu Jibbas came under attack by Israeli forces without advance warning. It also suggests that some were killed by a massive bomb.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN they were responding to enemy fire from the warehouse. One eyewitness said he heard what he called “resistance fire,” referring to fire from Hamas or another militant group, and local journalists reported “clashes” in the area that day. Eyewitnesses said there were no militants inside the warehouses where they were sheltering, and that they weren’t aware of Hamas operating in the area.

The families, she said, put up white flags – a universal sign of surrender – to indicate there were civilians there. She recounted that they wrote “displaced families” on the building.

CNN tracked down the owners of the warehouses where the Abu Jibba family was staying and another that hosted civilians across the street. Both said people from northern Gaza were living there for about two months before the attack.

Israeli drones and planes were constantly flying overheard, monitoring the area, Sumaya said. “They could see us. It was an open area, it was an open land, we would start fires and cook and bake bread… they knew it’s civilians.”

Hamed al-Hinnawi was sheltering just across the street from the Abu Jibba family. The ceramics and tile company he works for allowed him and his extended family to stay in their warehouse.

Some 95 displaced people were living there, al-Hinnawi told CNN.

Others, including Roba’s cousin, Alaa Abu Jibba, were sheltering in tents they had set up in fields next to the warehouses – visible in satellite images taken between December 6 and December 31.

On January 3, just days after an Israeli attack killed at least 70 people in the nearby Maghazi refugee camp, those in the warehouses said they could hear the war approaching.

Sometime after midnight, al-Hinnawi heard what he said was “resistance fire.” He described what followed as four hours of “unbelievable bombardment” by the Israeli military. “It was the quadcopter, the fighter jets, artillery – artillery started striking buildings, striking the warehouses we were in,” he said.

Then, the messages stopped. Al-Hinnawi said he and his family managed to sneak out of the warehouse through an opening in the back wall and headed west, away from the fiercest fighting. He said there was so much smoke that when he looked down, he couldn’t see the fingers on his hands.

Across the street, Roba said she and her family had no way to escape. “We were there in the room when they fired bombs, we didn’t move,” she said, referring to the annex where her family had been sleeping.

Alaa Abu Jibba, Roba’s cousin, said he watched the Israeli military surround the warehouse and fire at it. “They trapped the children from 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. Trapped in the heart of the warehouse, they were unable to go to Salaheddin Street or even (escape) through the back,” he said.

Watch the full investigation with CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh

With explosions all around them, Roba’s older brother, 22-year-old Hamdi, decided the family should try to flee. Their father had died two years earlier and, as the eldest son, Hamdi had stepped into the role of head of the household.

“My son, along with other relatives, started getting our belongings out the door. They hit with a round (of fire) and my son was killed, he was hit… in the heart, he bled, he ran, fell to the ground and died,” Sumaya said. Several others in the warehouse were also killed and wounded, she added.

Roba said she and her sisters were trying to call for an ambulance, but no one could come. Minutes later, Roba and Sumaya said an explosion ripped through the building and they were knocked unconscious.

CNN asked the Israeli military about the incident, providing coordinates for the warehouse and still images of the corpses filmed by CNN.

The IDF said that Israeli soldiers “were fired upon” from the location and said that “after identifying the source of the fire, in coordination between ground and air forces, a precise strike was executed on the source of fire in order to remove the imminent threat on IDF forces.” The military said it could not confirm that the corpses at the scene were related to its strike.

CNN could not corroborate the IDF’s claim that its forces came under fire from the building, but survivors said there were no militants operating in the warehouse.

International humanitarian law protects civilians in armed conflict and requires attacking forces to warn civilians of planned attacks if possible. Under the principle of proportionality enshrined in the UN charter, warring parties should not use more force than is needed to respond to a threat.

The testimonies collected by CNN and imagery of the damage to the building raise serious questions about whether the IDF made any efforts to avoid harm to civilians, and the proportionality of the attack.

Three weapons experts who analyzed the imagery for CNN said that a heavy munition, weighing as much as 2,000 pounds, was likely dropped on the warehouse.

Mark Hiznay, the associate arms director at Human Rights Watch, said the crater seen in the satellite image appeared to have been caused by a large, air-dropped bomb that detonated on impact. He said it was consistent “with a munition weighing 2,000 pounds.” Brian Castner, a weapons investigator at Amnesty and former explosive ordnance disposal officer, also said the crater was most likely caused by a 2,000-pound bomb.

An analysis by CNN and artificial intelligence company Synthetaic in December found that Israel had used hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs in the first month of its war in Gaza. The heavy munitions, which leave impact craters over 12 meters (40 feet) in diameter, are capable of killing or wounding people up to 365 meters (about 1,198 feet) away.

Reviewing photographs of the destroyed warehouse, Patrick Senft, a research coordinator at the Armament Research Services (ARES), came to a similar conclusion. Senft said that the destruction was “consistent with the effects of a munition generating substantial blast effects, such as an aerial bomb weighing several hundred kilograms.”

‘I saw my siblings dying’

Roba’s mother, Sumaya, said that when she woke up after the blast, she was covered in blood and felt injuries all over her body. She and her children were still huddled together. The metal roof of the warehouse had collapsed on them in the blast.

“Most of them were killed,” she said. “Roba was hanging between life and death.”

Roba’s sister Diana was still alive, trying to revive her siblings.

“The Israelis fired a bomb at us. I saw my siblings dying,” she told CNN. “Hamdi died in my arms. I was saying, ‘Wake up my brother, wake up!’ But he wouldn’t wake up.”

The injuries described by the family to CNN are consistent with those resulting from the blast wave of large explosives – known as over-pressure, the ballistics experts told CNN – which can cause injuries to internal organs. The most common blast-wave injury is a rupturing of the tiny air sacks in the lungs, causing the victim to essentially drown in their own blood.

Roba said that when she regained consciousness, she realized she couldn’t move. “I woke up to my mom saying, ‘let me take you out, the Israelis withdrew a bit from here,’ and I said, ‘I can’t, you go with my brother,’” she recalled.

Sumaya and three of her children – Diana, Adel and Hassanain – made it out of the warehouse.

“I was running with my hair exposed, bleeding,” Diana told CNN. “I said, ‘Help us, my family is still alive!’”

She soon lost consciousness. When she awoke, she was in the hospital, a doctor suturing her wounds.

Roba was stuck for several days inside the collapsed warehouse, surrounded by her dead siblings – Hamdi, 22, Al-Zain, 10, Feryal, 15, and Sabreen, 21.

Her youngest brother Ali, 13, lay dying beside her.

CNN obtained records from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital showing that the bodies of nine members of the extended Abu Jibba family were brought in on January 14, the day that CNN filmed at the warehouse.

Responding to an extensive set of questions from CNN, the Israeli military claimed that it closed this particular section of Salaheddin road for evacuation on January 3. It said that it started telling people to leave on January 1, including a “specific evacuation notice for the block in question.”

Asked for proof of the notice, the IDF did not show any evidence of its claim, which runs counter to the testimony from the survivors with whom CNN spoke.

IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, at 11:28 a.m. on January 4 that Salaheddin Street, including the stretch near Zawayda, was closed – the first time CNN was able to identify the IDF publicly doing so. “The humanitarian corridor on Salaheddin Street will be closed as of today,” he wrote in Arabic.

He did not reference the military operation. By that time, many people were already dead.

After the initial barrage, Roba said Israeli soldiers moved in on foot, coming across the injured family and interrogating them.

“They were asking about Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” she said. “We told them we don’t know anyone, we told them we are not from here, we are evacuees from Shejaiya. But nothing helped.”

“They left us in the room and started bulldozing, and then bombs started falling on us.”

The IDF said in a statement to CNN that “allegations of shooting at civilians who were sheltering in the area or any trampling of civilians with the help of bulldozers or any other vehicle are baseless.”

It wasn’t until three days later that Roba managed to leave the warehouse. Of her eight siblings, only three survived.

Badly injured and disoriented, Roba left the warehouse to find help, accompanied by a relative. Israeli soldiers stopped them on the street and her relative, who used to work in Israel, spoke with them in Hebrew, Roba said. They were interrogated again about Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and when they said they didn’t know anything about those groups, the Israelis let them go, she explained.

Roba said the soldiers did not offer her any medical help – only a bottle of water. On the long walk to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Roba and her relative found a lemon and split it. It was the first thing they had eaten in many days.

When Roba arrived at the hospital, she found it completely inundated with patients.

Gemma Connell, Gaza team leader for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), was at the hospital the same day, January 7. Speaking with CNN during the visit, she described seeing “absolute carnage” and a complete lack of resources. Referring to Roba, she said she met a woman “who was hit in the face by a strike,” who had waited for days to access healthcare amid ferocious fighting.

‘Nowhere in Gaza is safe’

Two weeks after the warehouse attack, on January 18, the IDF released a map showing a section of Salaheddin Street, describing it as the “Hamas manufacturing industry in Bureij,” and showing controlled demolitions of what they said were weapons production facilities.

According to the map, a building just 250 meters (820 feet) northeast of the warehouse where the Abu Jibba family was staying was used by Hamas for weapons manufacturing. CNN found IDF press releases from December 2022 and January 2023 touting strikes on that same location.

The warehouses used by displaced people on Salaheddin Street were not marked in IDF maps as having any affiliation with Hamas, nor did the IDF say they had any links to weapons manufacturing when CNN asked why its forces had targeted them.

UNRWA, the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees, also told CNN that one of its warehouses, located just up the road, was hit by two tank shells on January 4. That attack was corroborated by satellite imagery taken the next day.

Once Israeli forces finally withdrew, locals began to trickle back in, trying to find out what, if anything, remained. On January 14, a group accompanied by a Palestinian photojournalist working for CNN came across the collapsed warehouse.

In the corner, a woman had cowered, embracing a loved one. Her skin was now badly decomposed. The body of a young boy, wearing a red sweater, was partially covered by the rubble. The bodies of several adults were curled up nearby, as was another child with a catastrophic leg wound.

Their bodies were contorted. Many had no visible injuries – victims, most likely, to the blast wave’s ability to cause internal bleeding – and almost looked asleep.

“Cover her hair,” someone in the crowd said, laying a piece of cloth over the face of the woman in the corner, an attempt to give her some dignity in a place where none is left.

The men carefully removed debris, revealing yet more people. They discovered several Gazan ID cards. “Roba Abu Jibba,” one read.

It was that discovery that allowed CNN to link her testimony to the site and the remains of her siblings. The woman in the corner was Roba’s sister, Sabreen.

CNN asked three forensic experts to review footage of the bodies found in the warehouse. They said the remains showed signs that were consistent with blast injuries caused by the detonation of a massive bomb, which can cause severe internal injuries and death without any obvious external markers.

Bela Kubat, a forensic pathologist, said that based on the imagery, it was possible some of the people had died on January 4, the day of the strike. She pointed to postmortem changes visible in Sabreen’s remains – there was hardly any soft tissue left on the bones of her hands.

In the days after the attack, Roba was transported to the southern city of Rafah, where some 1.3 million people were sheltering at that time – the last remaining refuge in Gaza is now preparing for a looming ground offensive.

Roba was traumatized and badly wounded. She had no idea what had happened to her mother and three siblings. It took days for them to find each other.

When Sumaya finally heard that Roba was still alive and in critical condition, she prayed relentlessly that her daughter would pull through. “I had accepted losing them all, I thought Roba was dead,” Sumaya told CNN, her eyes filling with tears, mourning the death of her five children.

“We came to the south for nothing, and they bombed us, and our children were killed in the south. Nowhere in Gaza is safe, it’s all lies,” she said.

How CNN reported this story

To find survivors of the January 4 attack on Salaheddin Street in central Gaza, CNN contacted the owners of the warehouses where displaced people sheltered and hospitals where they were treated. To corroborate their testimonies, reporters in Gaza, Jerusalem and London drew on a mixture of on-the-ground reporting and open-source techniques. The team studied two months’ worth of satellite imagery, as well as videos and photos shared on social media, to help determine the type of munition dropped on the warehouse and to corroborate timing. The imagery was also reviewed by ballistics experts and forensic pathologists.