Bahaeldeen Ghalayini headed the Al Basma IVF Center, Gaza's biggest,. He doesn't know if the Israeli strike in December targeted the lab specifically or not.

But the impact of that single blast was far-reaching.

GHALAYINI: "...we know deeply what these 5,000 lives or potential lives mean for their parents, either for their future or for their past. For days I would say, I kept crying for what has happened."

Those embryos, sperm specimens and unfertilized eggs were a last hope for hundreds of Palestinian couples facing infertility.

JAAFARAWI: "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."

Seba Jaafarawi had three years of painful fertility treatment then became pregnant last September, right before the war broke out on October 7.

"I did not even have time to celebrate the news. You know an IVF case is very sensitive, unlike natural pregnancies. You have to take care, not go out, eat healthy food and move little..."

Ghalayini closed his clinic, where an additional five of Jaafarawi's embryos were stored.

Jaafarawi couldn't rest and keep her fragile pregnancy safe, with the elevator not working and a bomb leveling the building next door.

She started bleeding. She and her husband moved south to Khan Younis then Egypt on November 12.

Her first ultrasound in Cairo showed she was pregnant with twins. They were alive.

But a few days later she miscarried.

"It was really the most difficult moment of my life. I entered the bathroom, I had twins, one of the babies was hanging out of me and at that moment I didn't realize what was happening. I was screaming and shouting and I was exhausted. My mother wasn't with me, so the first thing that I said was that I wanted my mother, I was really tired, my situation was extremely difficult going through all this without my parents."

At least nine clinics in Gaza performed IVF. Most frozen embryos in Gaza were stored at the Al Basma Center.

Even before the strikes, Mohammed Ajjour, Al Basma's chief embryologist, says he struggled to get supplies of nitrogen to top up the specimen tanks. Electricity was also cut off.

But he says they can't give up on the couples who need them.

"We should return, and we will return and we will rebuild all these destroyed things. We will be a torch and beacon for the people who lost hope, so we restore the hope to them with God's strength."