Destruction of the Largest Embryo Bank in Gaza

In December 2023, the Israeli army destroyed the Al-Basma Medical Center, the largest fertility clinic in the Gaza Strip, resulting in the loss of about 4,000 frozen embryos and 1,000 sperm and egg samples.

‘My heart aches so much... All my memories, our hopes, and our future were in there,’ said Alia Abdel Rahman as she wept over her own embryo that was killed at the center.

Alia and her husband spent eight years undergoing infertility treatment at the Al-Basma Medical Center . She became pregnant through IVF, but suffered several miscarriages.

Alia is now 36 years old and is yet to have a child. She lost fertilized embryos that were ready to be implanted in her uterus, after undergoing the necessary procedures before the war started.

She and her husband also faced difficulties meeting the cost of treatment. She says: “I was getting money together and joined saving schemes. I didn't buy anything and would just make do with what we had. We went without and got some aid... I sold all my gold.”

Alia says there is no way she and her husband can start again, because of the dire economic conditions they face as a result of the war, saying: “Our house was destroyed and everything is gone.

Mohammed Halim (not his real name) and his family were forced to move houses when Israeli forces entered the Al-Daraj quarter. Halim says that he and his family arrived on El-Galaa Street on December 2, 2023, while traveling to a relative’s home in the area. As they passed by Al-Basma Medical Center, he recalls that the building was still intact at the time.

The family moved in and settled down for the night. The next morning, on December 3, they woke to find Israeli army vehicles in front of their building. Halim realized they were surrounded and unable to leave. Fearing they would be killed or arrested by Israeli army forces, they made sure to stay out of sight of the soldiers.
Halim says, “If they’d spotted us, they’d have executed everyone in the house.” .

Their home and those of the neighbours were under siege for ten days. Halim and his family were the only ones in the building. Having little to eat or drink, they managed to survive by searching for food and water in the upstairs apartments.

During this time, Israeli tanks were positioned about 90 meters from the Al-Basma Center.

Halim says: “One day during the siege, I went up to the fourth floor. There was an army position at the Zaharna intersection near the Al-Basma Center , with about four bulldozers and five tanks. Army forces were walking around and shops were being shelled as they combed the area.”

He adds: “The soldiers were coming from the direction of the Al-Basma Center, then they continued patrolling through the back streets.”

Halim states that the troops burned down neighbouring houses, not sparing the building Halim and his family were sheltering in. Then, on December 13, their building caught fire after being hit by an Israeli army tank shell.

The family moved to the upper floors to escape the fire, but the flames intensified and spread upwards too. They then managed to cross over to a neighbouring building using a wooden plank. "When I looked out of the window I saw our building, the ones around us, and the shops all on fire," says Halim. He says that one of the neighbouring homes had been booby-trapped, and they blew it up.

Halim and his family were able to leave the building at dawn the next day, after the sounds of shelling and bulldozing had stopped. The area looked like a ghost town, with some parts still on fire. The difficult days under siege ended only after the army had bulldozed the place, says Halim.

Ahmed Halim's testimony regarding the concentration of Israeli army vehicles at the Zaharna intersection near the Al-Basma Center matches that of Zaid Omar (not his real name), who also lived on El-Galaa Street.

The Israeli army tightly controlled the area, according to The Times of Israel correspondent Emanuel Fabian, who visited the Palestine Square district with other journalists on December 19. The square is about 500 meters from the Al-Basma IVF Center . Fabian reported hearing continuous explosions from air strikes and tank shells throughout the visit, which took place under “tight army control,” according to The Times of Israel.

An archive search of the Israeli army's website and social media accounts brought up a video of the Commanding Officer of the 401st Armored Brigade at that time, Colonel Beni Aharon, near Al-Basma Center. By analyzing landmarks in the video and comparing them with those on Google Earth, we were able to identify that Aharon was about 300 meters from the center. The video was posted the day after the Israeli journalists’ visit.

Aharon’s name features prominently in the incident involving Hind Rajab, a child from the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood. The Israeli army targeted a vehicle carrying her and her family, killing them all, and also shot at ambulances on their way to rescue the child.

Last May (2025), the Hind Rajab Foundation in Brussels filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court against Benny Aharon for committing war crimes and being responsible for the killing of this Palestinian child.

A Double Loss

When the Israeli army withdrew from parts of El-Galaa Street on December 29, 2023, they left behind a trail of destruction. Staff at the Al-Basma Center checked on the embryos only to find, in the words of Dr. Muhammad Ajour, “not a trace.”

The day after the Israeli army withdrew from El-Galaa Street, Nora Abu Al-Qumbaz lost her two babies, after going into premature labour. Nora was being treated at the Al-Basma Center and became pregnant with twins after her and her husband’s fertilized embryos were implanted in her womb.

Nora lost not only her two babies, but also the last two fertilized embryos that the couple had stored at Al-Basma Center, where they had undergone lengthy infertility treatment which cost them large sums of money over many years.

Looking back on those years, Nora says: “I sold my gold, and my husband and I joined money saving schemes... We’ve spent ten thousand dollars on treatment over the past few years.”

Throughout the war, Nora could not access any medical care. She was forced to move homes several times and often had to walk long distances due to lack of transport. Additionally, she was unable to receive her monthly treatments or feed herself properly. “I even ate mouldy bread so that they wouldn't go hungry”, she says, referring to the twins she was carrying.

When Nora felt she was going into labour at only seven months, she had to go to hospital by cart. But there were no incubators for premature babies at the hospital, and her twins died shortly after birth.

Nora is grief stricken by the death of her twins. She says: “I wish I’d died and they’d lived.”.And as for the loss of her frozen embryos, she says: “The thing I and my husband wanted and longed for, was gone in an instant.”

Photos taken of the Al-Basma Medical Center by one of the staff, after the army withdrawal at the end of December, show damage to the embryo storage tanks and rooms completely destroyed, leaving the place unrecognizable. In some parts of the building, the walls were completely blown away.

Outside, the front façade shows multiple holes caused by gunfire, which left damage to the surrounding outer layer, in addition to large gaps resulting from shelling. The building’s front fence and parts of the street were also bulldozed.

Ittimad Jundiya, nursing supervisor at the Al-Basma Center, says that the embryo storage and operating rooms were damaged the most. Incubators containing around 4,000 embryos, as well as 1,000 sperm and eggs from couples hoping to conceive, were destroyed.

“Some of the women who lost their frozen embryos also lost their husbands in the war,” says Jundiya. She points out that it will be difficult to take new samples for IVF from some of the couples affected. And she notes that some of the women treated at the clinic are of an age where their egg production is declining.

Al-Basma’s director, Dr. Bahaa al-Ghalayini, says that the center was targeted by three shells. Two hit the center's most important facilities: the genetics and embryology laboratories. These are in the north-western corner of the building, where a shell also took out the operating theatre and the embryo room.

The storage tanks contained embryos not only from people treated at the center, says Al-Ghalayini. Other IVF centers without their own freezers also had their frozen embryos stored at the Al-Basma Center .

Photos of the destruction that affected the Al-Basma Fertility Center

The head of the Center 's embryology laboratory, Dr. Muhammad Ajour, says that he was in contact with a relative living on El-Galaa Street, as well as one of the Center 's staff, and that the two of them used to go to check up on the Center . Ajour says: “The last visit they made to this Center was on the second or third of December.” This matches what Muhammad Halim said about the building being intact at that time.

Ajour adds: “From the beginning of the war, a major concern we had was that we would lose the embryos, because it was so hard to get hold of liquid nitrogen, which evaporates naturally. And the samples would be destroyed if they were not kept submerged in this liquid.”

Ajour managed to contact a nitrogen production plant and was told they had 50 litres in stock. He reached out to ambulance drivers who were making the journey from the south to the north of Gaza, aiming to secure enough nitrogen for the Center to last two months. He says: "The ground offensive was getting going at that time and tanks reached El-Galaa Street, where the Center was.” He added: “We were afraid for the samples because of the shortage of nitrogen, not because of direct shelling."

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, concluded that Israeli security forces intentionally attacked and destroyed the Al-Basma IVF Center , the main fertility center in Gaza. Israeli security forces destroyed all the material stored there, which was to enable Palestinians to have children in the future.

The commission concluded that they did this with the intent to exterminate the Palestinian people in Gaza as a group, in whole or in part, and that this was the “only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question.”

The commission states in its report that it had found no evidence that the Al-Basma Center was a legitimate military target at the time it was attacked by Israeli security forces. It concluded that “the destruction of the Center was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act under the Rome Statute and Genocide Convention..”

Anjli Parrin, lawyer and director of the Global Human Rights Clinic (GHRC) at the University of Chicago Law School, told ARIJ that the attack on the Al-Basma Center was devastating and that, based on the available information, this constitutes strong evidence of international crimes.

She stated that the Center enjoyed special protection under the laws of war and - being the largest fertility Center in Gaza, storing thousands of embryos, eggs, and unfertilized sperm - was of the utmost importance to Palestinians seeking to have children. The destruction of Al-Basma Center had caused thousands of Palestinian families to lose hope of a better life, an irretrievable loss.

Parrin gave testimony on the reproductive health Centers in Gaza and the destruction they suffered to the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel.

Parrin presented the commission with the events experienced by the Al-Basma Center before it issued its report on Israel's use of reproductive violence against Palestinians in Gaza.

“While genocide is often a process made up of many different events and acts, the UN Commission of Inquiry found the attack on the Al Basma Center to be one of the most important individual pieces of evidence in making its findings”.

She explained that two elements must be present before a conclusion of genocide can be reached: physical acts of mass extermination, and a mental element - specific intent on the part of the “alleged” perpetrators. Therefore, it is necessary to prove that killing has occurred – or, in this case, that the IVF center was attacked, resulting in the physical act of preventing births, which constitutes genocide - but also that the genocidal acts were conducted with the intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part.

Parrin, who is also an assistant clinical professor of law at the University of Chicago, pointed out that, in most cases, the most difficult thing to establish is intent. But the commission of inquiry found in September 2025, based on the evidence it had collected, that “Israeli security forces knew of the function of the clinic and intended to target it and destroy the reproductive material within.”

Parrin said that the commission had concluded - based on its assessment of the Al-Basma attack and further evidence of targeting of other maternal health facilities in Gaza - that both the intent elements and the physical elements of the crime had been established.

In her opinion, the ARIJ investigation into what happened at Al-Basma adds further weight to this assessment, and also paints a detailed picture of what actually happened around the clinic during the attacks, which strongly supports the commission's conclusions.

Parrin believes that ARIJ investigation - which includes eyewitness accounts of Israeli army tanks close to the Al-Basma clinic as well as a finding that Israeli forces controlled the immediate area during the period of the alleged attack help to further bolster the evidence of the possible perpetrator.

Muhammad Halim says he has not forgotten the difficult days he lived through during the siege on El-Galaa Street. He says that when they left, “We agreed that we wouldn’t move in twos, so that if they targeted one of us, someone would still be alive to tell the story.”