When an Israeli shell struck Gaza’s largest fertility clinic in December it destroyed more than 4,000 embryos plus 1,000 sperm specimens and unfertilised eggs, according to a report by Reuters news agency.

The Israeli strike blasted the lids off five liquid nitrogen tanks stored in a corner of the embryology unit. As the ultra-cold liquid evaporated, the temperature inside the tanks rose, destroying the reproductive specimens at Gaza City’s al-Basma invitro fertilisation centre.

• “We know deeply what these 5,000 lives, or potential lives, meant for the parents, either for the future or for the past,” said Bahaeldeen Ghalayini, a Cambridge-trained obstetrician and gynaecologist who first opened the clinic in 1997.
• At least half of the couples affected will not have another chance to get pregnant, he added.
• “All these lives were killed or taken away: 5,000 lives in one shell.”

Source: Al Jazeera