The American website "The Intercept" reported the story of a family whose house was bombed in the northern Gaza Strip, part of which is located in the United States. After the first raid on the house, one of its members tried to contact the White House and send the coordinates of the house in order to evacuate the wounded from it, but it was bombed by Israel again, which led to the martyrdom of a number of members of the Al-Sayed family and the doctor Ahmed Al-Najjar.

“In the middle of the afternoon on October 14, Ayman al-Sayed in the United States received a call. His brother Diaa was on the phone from Gaza City. Diaa was fine, but an airstrike had targeted his family’s home in Jabalia. Some of their loved ones, including their mother, Zahia, were killed. Others survived, trapped in the remains of the building,” The Intercept began its report.

“Ayman recalls Diaa’s desperate pleas for his injured brother Ashraf: ‘He told me about my brother, he can’t move, he’s injured. He said, ‘Please, please, if you can do anything from America to help the family.’ Ayman didn’t have much choice,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do. We know it’s impossible to find someone to help from here. But we did our best.”

“Every time Ayman tried, nothing worked,” the report continued. “Finally, a breakthrough came: A friend put him in touch with the head of a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., who was in touch with someone in the White House. Ayman gave them the address and coordinates of the house. “We sent this so they could pass it on to the Israelis to allow an ambulance to pick people up,” Ayman said.

The report continued: “In Gaza, daylight was fast approaching. Diaa al-Sayed was still in contact with his surviving family in Jabalia.

Some of the trapped relatives had been bleeding for hours. At around 7:30 a.m., a local doctor finally managed to enter their home and carry away the injured children. The doctor said he would return to help the surviving adults get out. About 15 minutes later, Diaa received horrific news. The doctor and most of the children had been killed. The house had been attacked again. Only one of his brothers and his nephew had survived.

“Attempts to rescue civilians in Gaza often end up targeting those same civilians,” the report said. “Israel has repeatedly attacked emergency and humanitarian workers whose locations have been given to its military as part of requests for safe passage. This is a constant reminder to Palestinians that they are not safe at all.”

The report referred to the story of the Palestinian child Hind Rajab, who was trapped inside a vehicle with her relatives. Despite the appeals and requests for a medical team to arrive to save her, the incident, which ended after 10 days, revealed her martyrdom and that of all her relatives. The report also mentioned the raid that killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen organization, despite their car travel being coordinated with the Israeli army, according to the organization.

“Ensuring safe passage is common in warfare, but in Israel’s campaign against Gaza it has proven to be a risk rather than a guarantee of security,” the report said. “In May, Human Rights Watch said the attack on the World Central Kitchen workers was not an isolated incident; it was one of at least eight strikes in which aid organizations and the United Nations contacted Israeli authorities about the coordinates of an aid convoy or building, and Israeli forces attacked the convoy or shelter without warning.”

Moreover, the Israeli military attacked ambulances and killed emergency workers throughout the war. This was the deadly combination that brothers Ayman and Diaa al-Sayed faced as they tried to rescue their family. The White House’s help seemed unusual, but it didn’t help at all. According to Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the second attack, despite the White House’s involvement, points to Washington’s inability to address allegations of Israeli military harm to civilians.

“They knew they could do all this without any serious pressure from the White House,” Awad told The Intercept. “The White House, by this very act of providing information to the Israelis, is demonstrating its incompetence. They have no intention of holding Israel accountable.”

For Ayman al-Sayed, in the United States, the idea that his attempts to help his loved ones ended this way left him with a deep sense of guilt. “It’s hard to express how I felt,” he said. “This is what I think: that I hurt my family, that I didn’t help them, by giving all this information to the embassy, which passed it on to the Israelis. Instead of providing safe passage for the ambulance, they attacked the house again using the coordinates we gave them.”

By then, the Israeli military had been blockading northern Gaza for about 10 days. The offensive had hit the Jabalia refugee camp particularly hard. UN officials had already warned of dire conditions, with tens of thousands of people cut off from aid and countless civilians killed and injured. Hospital capacity and emergency services had been severely strained long before the blockade, but now access to care was even more difficult.

“Unfortunately, this family’s story is one of dozens of others,” said Nibal Farsakh, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. “From previous experiences when we were coordinating the arrival of staff, the ambulance was targeted several times despite being part of coordinated missions.”

In the United States, Ayman al-Sayed and his wife Rachel were trying to figure out what to do. Getting an ambulance to their family in Jabalia required approval from the Israeli authorities. Al-Sayed tried to contact the Red Crescent, but they confirmed what Diaa had been told: Red Crescent ambulances could not pass through the Israeli army.

Then, as American citizens, Ayman and Rachel took refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, but it was nighttime there. The only office open was the emergency desk—unlikely to have a direct line to the Israeli military.

With time running out, they decided to ask their friends if they knew anyone who could help. That outreach eventually led them to Sean Carroll, director of the nonprofit Anera. Carroll, whose group provides food and medical aid in Gaza, said he quickly reached out to a contact at the White House and got an immediate response.

“They were asking for coordinates,” Carroll told The Intercept. Working with Mr. Sayed’s family and colleagues on the ground, Carroll provided the information to a National Security Council official. “We tried to provide coordinates, but also a description of where the house was. So the National Security Council sent it over,” he said.

He also contacted the Israeli military’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which administers Palestinian civilian life in the occupied territories, including emergency logistics and medical services. Carroll did not get an immediate response, but with the White House trying to help, COGAT’s silence was not alarming.

"I wasn't too concerned about my contacts with COGAT, because I knew the National Security Council and the embassy were in contact with them," he said.

A National Security Council spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept that the White House had received information about the initial attack and that multiple agencies, including the State Department, were part of the effort to try to assist.

The spokesman added that "the administration also passed on the information it received from the family's communications to the Israeli authorities and the United Nations, for further assistance," although he did not specify which Israeli government department or UN office received the information.

Carroll said his call to the White House informed him that the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem had passed the information to Israel's Southern Command, the military branch whose area of responsibility includes the Gaza Strip.

Ayman El-Sayed expressed skepticism that White House intervention would help his family, given the Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel. “But I wanted to do something at least,” he said. “I just wanted to do whatever I could.”

“By the time the White House entered, hours had passed since the initial attack,” the report continued. “In Gaza, Diaa al-Sayed was still in contact with relatives trapped under the rubble of their home. All night long I was in contact with them, and there was nothing but fear, screaming and crying. My sister-in-law, Sumaya, kept saying, ‘My children were martyred before my eyes, and my husband was injured.’”

As morning approached, Diaa called Ahmed al-Najjar, a doctor and family friend. As his wounded relatives bled to death, Diaa hoped al-Najjar could help. “He called me to tell me he was preparing to evacuate the wounded and children from the house to a safer place,” Diaa said.

It was around 7:30 a.m. when the carpenter told Diaa that he would carry the injured children first and then return to the surviving adults. It was a glimmer of hope after a long, desperate night, but it quickly turned into a fleeting hope.

“When I called him, the doctor, after about 15 minutes to check on them, a stranger answered and told me that Dr. Al-Najjar was martyred,” Diaa said. “When I asked him how that happened, he told me that the occupation army targeted Dr. Al-Najjar and the children he was saving while they were trying to leave the area.”

One of the children who went with the doctor was Diaa and Ayman al-Sayed’s 8-year-old nephew, Mohammed. Ayman said his nephew later recounted seeing a drone following the group, witnessing the attack that killed al-Najjar and the other children, but managing to escape. Ayman al-Sayed said Mohammed told him, “The child was behind them, and when the attack started, a neighbor pulled him to safety inside their house. Someone opened the door and let him in. That’s what helped him survive.”

After trying to reach his family again, he learned of a new Israeli attack. When emergency workers finally reached Sayed’s home in Jabalia, they found the bodies of the doctor and the children in the street, according to Karim al-Hasani, a first responder at the scene. Video taken by emergency workers shows the bodies of several members of Sayed’s family, including the youngest, 18-year-old Amal, with blood streaming down her head.

Rescuers then headed to the Sayed’s house. “We entered the house and found two people injured, alive and bleeding,” Hassani told The Intercept. They were Ashraf and another Sayed brother, Hani. But Hani’s injuries were critical. By the time we got to the hospital, he was dead.

By morning, about 11 hours after the first airstrike, al-Najjar and 11 members of the al-Sayyid family, six of them children, had been killed. The only surviving family members were Ashraf al-Sayyid, now paralyzed from injuries sustained in the attack, and Mohammed, his only surviving son.

An Israeli military spokesman said they would not provide answers to questions unless they were given the coordinates of Sayed’s family home. Because of the subject matter of the story, The Intercept did not provide those coordinates.

In a video sent to reporters, Fares Afaneh, the emergency worker who spoke to Sumaya al-Sayed the night before, said: “If we had moved from the first moment, we could have been allowed to move and not put the ambulance and civil defense crews at risk. If the lives of these women and children could have been saved.”

Ashraf, Sayed’s brother who survived the attack, and his son Mohammed are currently in a hospital in northern Gaza. Ayman and Diaa said Ashraf is in constant pain. His recovery is being complicated by the state of Gaza’s health care system, including Israeli restrictions on medicines and supplies.

Diaa is also worried about his young nephew Mohammed. “He saw his siblings being blown to pieces and he is traumatized,” Diaa says. “He can’t sleep. He wakes up at night and screams for his mother, father and siblings.”

While caring for his brother and nephew, Diaa is also trying to get better medical help for his daughter Tala, who herself is struggling to recover from severe burn injuries from the December airstrike that killed Diaa’s wife and other children. Diaa said the only hope for his injured daughter and brother is medical evacuation, which has become almost impossible due to Israeli restrictions.

“We live without security, without shelter, without hope,” he continued. “Every night I look for a corner where my daughter and I can sleep. This war is not only destroying buildings; it is tearing people’s lives apart. It has taken everything from us – our families, our homes, our dignity. There are no words that can describe the suffering we are living.”

Thousands of miles away, in the United States, Ayman al-Sayed has to rely on intermittent communication to make calls to his surviving family members. He worries about their safety, but also about their future, as the Israeli blockade of northern Gaza brings new horrors every day.