Michigan doctor says he’s lost 20 family members in Gaza bombardment

Emad Shehada’s sister in Gaza said she could smell the blood of their 12 family members, including a child, killed Wednesday night in an Israeli airstrike that hit the home next to hers.

The metallic smell grew stronger when she discovered portions of human flesh that crashed through a window of her southwest Gaza home.

She could see the limbs of her relatives in the rubble. They were killed while praying, she said.

The family lost eight others, some children, just days prior, in the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Shehada said.

Shehada, a local pulmonologist, said he has felt helpless and hopeless since war broke out between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7. It’s a hopelessness that keeps “creeping into my soul every day,” he said.

“There’s nowhere to go. Families are hiding together, and they are going to be targeted together,” said Shehada, 47, of West Bloomfield.

He’s one of many metro Detroiters with ties to Gaza and Israel feeling the effects of the war. Nearly 9,000 Michiganders reported Palestinian ancestry in the 2020 census.