An Israeli shell struck Gaza's largest fertility clinic in December destroying about 5,000 potential lives along with the dreams of hundreds of Palestinian parents suffering from infertility issues.

The impact of that single explosion in December is an example of the unseen toll Israel's six-and-a-half-month-old assault has had on the 2.3 million people of Gaza.

At least half of the couples, who were registered with the fertility clinic and cannot produce sperm or eggs to make viable embryos anymore, will not have another chance to get pregnant.

The reality is even harder to grasp given that despite Gaza's poverty, many couples with infertility issues pursue IVF by selling TVs and jewellery to pay the fees.

IVF is an improvised pregnancy procedure where eggs are collected from a woman's ovaries and fertilised by men’s sperm in a lab. The fertilised eggs, called embryos, are often frozen until the optimal time for transfer to a woman's uterus.

Although there are nine clinics in Gaza offering IVF services, most frozen embryos in December were stored at the Al Basma centre, the enclave’s largest fertility clinic.

December’s blast damaged the lids of five liquid nitrogen tanks at the Al Basma IVF centre leading to evaporation of the ultra-cold liquid. The temperature inside the tanks rose, destroying more than 4,000 embryos plus 1,000 more specimens of sperm and unfertilised eggs stored.

"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, 73, the Cambridge-trained obstetrician and gynaecologist who established the clinic in 1997.

"My heart is divided into a million pieces," he said.

Three years of fertility treatment was a psychological roller coaster for Zara (Not her original name). The retrieval of eggs from her ovaries was painful, the hormone injections had strong side-effects and the sadness when two attempted pregnancies failed seemed unbearable.

Zara, 32, and her husband could not get pregnant naturally and turned to in vitro fertilisation (IVF), which is widely available in Gaza.

In September, Zara became pregnant, her first successful IVF attempt.

"I did not even have time to celebrate the news," she said.

Two days before her first scheduled ultrasound scan, Hamas launched the 7 October attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

In response, Israel launched an all-out assault killing more than 33,000 Palestinians till date, potentially to commit genocide and reoccupy the impoverished enclave.

Due to the Israel-Hamas war, Zara’s ultrasound never happened and Ghalayini closed his clinic, where an additional five of Zara’s embryos were stored.

At the end of October, Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza and soldiers closed in on the streets around the IVF centre.

Zara knew she should rest to keep her fragile pregnancy safe, but hazards were everywhere. She often had to climb stairs to reach her apartment on the sixth floor as the elevator had become inoperative from Israeli strikes. Food and water also became scarce.

To flee the brutal Israeli onslaught, Zara and her husband crossed into Egypt on 12 November and in Cairo, her first ultrasound showed she was pregnant with twins and they were alive.

But after a few days, she experienced painful cramps, bleeding and a sudden shift in her belly. She made it to hospital, but the miscarriage had already begun.

"The sounds of me screaming and crying at the hospital are still (echoing) in my ears," she said.

The pain of loss has not stopped.

"Whatever you imagine or I tell you about how hard the IVF journey is, only those who have gone through it know what it's really like," she said.

Zara wanted to return to the war zone, retrieve her frozen embryos and attempt IVF again.

But it was soon too late.

Ghalayini said a single Israeli shell struck the corner of the centre, blowing up the ground floor embryology lab. He does not know if the attack specifically targeted the lab or not.