In the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that killed three Palestinians, a paramedic was engulfed by grief after finding his mother among the dead.
Abdulaziz Al-Burdini, a Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic, was sent to Al-Maghazi in central Gaza on Wednesday to pick up wounded bodies following an Israeli airstrike that struck a car, according to Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Hospital.
Among the bodies was a woman he did not recognize. He took her to the hospital in an ambulance, but it was not until after the doctors confirmed her death that he looked at her face more closely and realized she was his mother.
CNN footage, taken with the paramedic’s permission, captured the moments soon after the realization.
“Mother… I didn’t know it was you, I swear I didn’t recognize you. I swear I didn’t!” he cries in anguish as he pushes the hospital stretcher carrying her body.
His colleagues approach to comfort him, but he pushes them away.
“I want to see my mother. Leave me, I want to stay with her,” he says, cradling her body.
He then stands weeping on top of her in his bloodied uniform screaming “Oh God, Oh God.”
“What do I tell my siblings now? Why do you all leave me? Why? I can’t hold this anymore. My brothers, my father, and now you? It’s too much for me!” Al-Burdini says, alluding to the death of his other family members during the war.
As his mother’s body is taken away, his friends and colleagues surround and comfort him.
“I didn’t know it was my mother…. she looked like someone I knew. I looked at her details to check if it was my mom,” he says, sobbing.
He then walks back to the morgue with his colleague to see his mother one last time. He sits beside her on the floor for a while, crying and praying. Then her body is taken for burial.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli military for comment on the strike.
