After “Israel” struck Gaza’s largest fertility and IVF clinic, Al Basma Center, five liquid nitrogen tanks in the embryology unit had their lids blasted off, destroying more than 4000 embryos and 1000 specimens of sperm and unfertilized eggs, Reuters reported. 

Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, the Cambridge-trained obstetrician and gynecologist who established the clinic in 1997, expressed, “We know deeply what these 5,000 lives, or potential lives, meant for the parents, either for the future or for the past."

He noted that at least half of those couples who can no longer produce sperm or eggs will not have another opportunity to have a baby.

"My heart is divided into a million pieces."

According to Ghalayini, those who underwent IVF were selling TVs and their jewelry in order to pay the fees.

It is worth noting, as per the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, that almost half the population in the Strip is under 18 and the fertility rate is high at 3.38 births per woman. 

Every ten minutes, a pregnant woman in the #Gaza Strip gives birth under brutal circumstances, as thousands of other pregnant women in shelter centers and tents face the risk of contracting diseases, abortion, and even direct murder by Israeli forces.#PalestineGenocide pic.twitter.com/VO08sNUJ3S

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) February 14, 2024

Nine clinics were available in Gaza for the treatment whereby the fertilized eggs were frozen until the time was ready for transfer to a woman's uterus, with most embryos stored at the Al Basma center.

'Only those who experience it know what it's really like'

One example is Seba Jaafarawi, who spent three years undergoing treatment and painful injections after two failed attempted pregnancies and thus resorted to in vitro fertilization (IVF).

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She became pregnant in September following her first successful IVF attempt. Shortly after, the war began. 

"I did not even have time to celebrate the news," she expressed, asking, “How would I complete my pregnancy? What would happen to me and what would happen to the ones inside my womb?"

She was never able to undergo an ultrasound, and the clinic was closed where five of her embryos were stored.

Considering that liquid nitrogen levels have to be sufficient for embryo survival, Mohammed Ajjour, Al Basma's chief embryologist, began to worry as he needed to keep the temperature below -180C in each tank, and when he managed to receive one delivery of liquid nitrogen, “Israel” cut electricity and fuel to Gaza, and its military tanks roamed around the center - making it dangerous for anyone to go in.

Jaafarawi faced her own struggles as she had to climb six flights of stairs to her apartment because the elevator stopped working; food and water became a scarcity and a bomb on the building next door took out her windows.

“I got very scared and there were signs that I would lose (the pregnancy)," she stated, adding that after she and her husband crossed into Egypt on November 12, her first ultrasound showed she was having twins. However, a few days later, bleeding began and there was a sudden shift in her belly. The miscarriage was happening. 

“The sounds of me screaming and crying at the hospital are still (echoing) in my ears… Whatever you imagine or I tell you about how hard the IVF journey is, only those who have gone through it know what it's really like," she said. 

She wanted to return for her frozen embryos to try again, but it was too late. 

Ghalayini asserted that one shelling from “Israel” took out the enter ground floor, which had the embryology lab. 

“All these lives were killed or taken away: 5,000 lives in one shell," he said.

Earlier this month, as per a Reuters-commissioned journalist who visited the lab, the embryology lab was shown with blown-up lab supplies and liquid nitrogen tanks among the rubble. 

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The lids were open and at the bottom of one of the tanks was a basket of color-coded straws containing the ruined microscopic embryos.