Amin Akal al-Qoraan, 10, Jawad Ibrahim al-Qoraan, 11, Malek Ibrahim al-Qoraan, 16, and Mahmoud Diab al-Qoraan, 16, all cousins, were slain on October 7 when they were hit by a rocket while sitting together in their Bedouin village of Kukhleh.
Malek and Jawad were brothers, and Amin and Mahmoud were their cousins. Malek and Jawad are survived by their parents, Ibrahim and Yusra, and their other siblings, while Amin is survived by his parents, Rana and Akal and his siblings, and Mahmoud is survived by his parents, Diab and Fariha and two sisters. Other family members were seriously wounded in the strike.
Those living in unrecognized Bedouin villages in the south have long complained that they lack bomb shelters as well as the infrastructure for air raid sirens, leaving them uniquely vulnerable to rocket attacks. They say that the location is also considered an “open area” by the IDF, and many of the rockets are therefore not intercepted.
Residents of many such villages have been engaged in a decades-long battle with the state, which says their neighborhoods are illegal and has been trying to convince them to move into planned, recognized townships with state infrastructure and shelters.
Nearby the al-Qoraan family in Kuhkleh, Mai Zuhair and her grandmother, Faizah Abu Sabeeh, were also killed in a rocket attack on October 7.
Said al-Qoraan, an uncle to the four boys, told the Kan public broadcaster, “I wish I could give my life to give them more time to live. I wish I could give up what I had left for you. My souls.”
“It’s an unimaginable disaster, the ordinary human mind can’t comprehend such a thing,” added Said, a career IDF officer. “I had to rescue them from the rubble, from the inferno… they died in my arms.”
He said that after the tragedy, the IDF set up temporary shelters and sandbanks in the town, “but we already lost the most precious thing to us… I can’t look their mothers in the eye.”
When they were buried, he said, “Every time they lowered one of them into the ground I wanted to go in, too. People stopped me. I wanted to join them.”
Speaking to Ynet in November 2023, Malek and Jawad’s father, Ibrahim, told Ynet that the word “tragedy” is too small to describe what happened.
“Our children, a piece of our heart. We have no tears left,” he said. “We lost our children. At home. In their home. Which should be the safest place.”
Ibrahim, speaking to Ynet again in August 2024, said that things are “very hard. We’re still in October 7. Nothing has changed. We still have no protection. It doesn’t leave us, and when I start to talk about it it takes me back… brings up all the emotions again. It’s not something you can recover from.”
He added that “you can live with the loss and the bereavement but you can’t heal it. Our loss is very big.”
