The Independent has reported that the father of their Gaza City-based journalist had also been killed in an Israeli attack.

Fares Akram’s 48-year-old father Akrem al-Ghoul was killed on Saturday in an air strike on the family farmhouse by an Israeli F-16 fighter jet.

His father was killed in the blast as he walked outside the farmhouse near Beit Lahiya in Northern Gaza.

In an emotional account, Mr Akram wrote: “The phone call came at around 4.20pm on Saturday.

”A bomb had been dropped on the house at our small farm in northern Gaza. My father was walking from the gate to the farmhouse at the time.

”It was our beloved place, that farm and its two-storey white house with a red roof.”

He added: “Warplanes and helicopters had swept in, bombing and firing to open up the space for the tanks and ground forces that would follow in the darkness.

”It was one of those F16 airstrikes that killed my father.

”The house was reduced to little more than powder, and of Dad there was nothing much left either.

”’Just a pile of flesh’ my uncle, who found him in the rubble, said later with brutal honesty.”

Mr Akram said he had spent the last few days trapped in his flat in Gaza City.

He last saw his father on Thursday.

He explained: “We talked about the imminent birth of my first child and how we would get my wife, Alaa, to hospital amid the bombing and chaos.

”Of course, on Saturday evening there was no hope of getting an ambulance up to the farm because the roads were cut off by the Israelis.”

He added: “Deep down we all knew Dad was dead. He would have been in or near the house, and if an F16 strikes directly at your house you know what it means.”

Mr Akram, said his father, a former lawyer and judge, had hated what Hamas had done to Gaza’s legal system.

He said: “My grief carries no desire for revenge, which I know to be always in vain.

”But, in truth, as a grieving son, I am finding it hard to distinguish between what the Israelis call terrorists and the Israeli pilots and tank crews who are invading Gaza.

”What is the difference between the pilot who blew my father to pieces and the militant who fires a small rocket?

”I have no answers but, just as I am to become a father, I have lost my father.”