Drop Site is a reader-funded, independent news outlet. Without your support, we can’t operate. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible donation today.The bullet that killed Ritaj Rihan, 9, as she attended class in school in Beit Lahia is placed next to her body in the morgue of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. April 9, 2026. Photo by Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images.Story by Mohammed Ahmed, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Jawa AhmadGAZA CITY, GAZA—Three-year-old Yahya Al-Malahi lay on a metal table in the morgue of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Family members wept as they caressed his small body and stroked his cheek. A large hole, the size of an orange, was missing from the back of his head.Yahya was among five Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a police vehicle on Al-Nafaq street, a crowded civilian area in the middle of Gaza City on Tuesday.“I wish it had been me instead of you,” Yahya’s father Mukhlis Al-Malahi said as he sobbed over his son’s body. His sweater was soaked with his son’s blood. Al-Malahi told Drop Site Yahya was being carried on his uncle’s back when the missile struck. “I felt I was hit, I began to say the shahada. Then I found my son, his head was split open,” he said.Yahya Al-Malahi’s father, Mukhlis, and other relatives inside the morgue at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on April 14, 2026. Video by Mohammed Ahmed.The Al-Malahi family were walking on Al-Nafaq street on their way back from a wedding of a relative when the attack happened. “My cousin, his son, and his brothers were on their way home when there was an airstrike in the street,” Yahya’s cousin, Hader Al-Malahi, told Drop Site through tears. “The little boy was martyred, and his brothers and uncles were injured. That’s what happened. His crime was that he was a Palestinian child—a Palestinian child who had a wedding to attend. Instead of wearing a suit, he is now wearing a shroud.”Overcome with grief, Mukhlis bent over his son’s lifeless body and held it close. “Is this a ceasefire, people? Look,” he said pointing at the gaping wound in Yahya’s head. “Is this a ceasefire?”On Al-Nafaq street, crowds gathered around the destroyed police vehicle. Small pools of blood stained the road. Abu Ahmad, a bystander, witnessed the attack. “There was a police patrol going out on a mission,” he told Drop Site. “They took a detainee with them and while coming from Al-Yarmouk Junction toward Al-Nafaq Junction, they were targeted.” Two policemen and the detainee were killed in the strike and several others injured.In response, Hamas blasted Israel for deliberately targeting police forces working for Gaza’s Interior Ministry. “The intensified targeting of civilian police officers by the terrorist occupation army comes within the context of the Zionist government’s relentless efforts to sow chaos in the Gaza Strip, weaken the security apparatus, and provide an opportunity for its proxy militias to implement its malicio