Mohammad Eyad Hassouna

Their life

Mohammad Eyad Hassouna, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, was killed by an Israeli drone strike on his home in Rafah, Gaza, on August 6, 2022, during Israel’s three-day military offensive. His death—alongside 23 others (including 6 children)—exposed the indiscriminate violence faced by Gaza’s civilians under siege.

Mohammad Eyad Hassouna entered the world in 2008, a year after Israel imposed its brutal blockade on Gaza, ensuring his entire 14 years of life would be measured in power cuts, water shortages, and the ever-present hum of surveillance drones. He grew up in Rafah's concrete warrens, where 85% of residents rely on UN food aid and children learn to distinguish between Israeli F-16s and Apache helicopters by sound alone. His brief life spanned three major Israeli military offensives—each leaving him with deeper trauma: at age 6, he survived the 2014 war that killed 551 children; at 13, he lived through the 2021 bombing that destroyed his neighborhood's only playground.

The night of August 6, 2022, found Mohammad doing what Gaza's children do best—waiting. With electricity available only 4 hours daily, he likely sat in his family's cramped apartment, perhaps reviewing schoolwork by phone light (Gaza's students maintain astonishing 95% literacy rates despite chronic school bombings). Without warning, an Israeli dr

How they died

He was Killed by Israeli drone-fired missile

Mohammad Eyad Hassouna's death was the direct result of an Israeli drone strike that unleashed multiple lethal mechanisms of trauma upon his young body. The missile, likely a U.S.-supplied Hellfire variant, detonated with such force that it generated a supersonic overpressure wave capable of causing immediate internal organ damage—rupturing his lungs, collapsing his airways, and triggering fatal neurological trauma from the sudden blast wave impacting his brain. Simultaneously, the explosion propelled jagged shrapnel and building fragments at ballistic velocities, lacerating his torso and severing critical arteries. The structural collapse of his family home then subjected him to crushing forces, with concrete slabs fracturing his skull and ribs while pinning him beneath debris—a combination of injuries that made survival impossible even if medical help had been immediately available.

Why we remember them

This record exists so that Mohammad Eyad Hassouna, and all who are named in this archive, are never reduced to a number.

References & sources