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A Palestinian boy carries a damaged wheelchair amid the debris of the Gaza home where two disabled people were killed by an Israeli air strike.
Who knows who lived in the two first-floor apartments above a home for eight disabled adults in a neighbourhood of eastern Gaza.

Perhaps, as a neighbour suggests, one of them was a militant with Islamic Jihad who lived there with his family. But the neighbour says he isn't sure. What is certain is that the occupant was absent in the early hours of Saturday morning when the two Israeli drones "knocked on his roof" - firing warning shots to encourage civilians to vacate the building prior to a strike.

A few minutes later, an Israeli war plane fired a missile into the house. But it didn't detonate on the first floor. Instead, it smashed through to the ground floor where the explosion ripped through the room where five of the disabled residents were sleeping, killing two and injuring the others.

A neighbour found one of the dead, who was missing initially, after he noticed flies buzzing around the place where she was buried. "A body! A body!" the man shouted. Gingerly he lifted the piece of concrete concealing a curly head of hair, face down in the debris.

Atef Abed, a supervisor with the private charity that runs the home, recognised Suha Abu Saada, 47, as her body was dug out of the rubble, one of her legs missing. As small as a child, she had been thrown out of the room where she was sleeping by the blast and buried beneath a concrete wall.

"That's Suha," Abed said as the body was carried past on a mattress covered in a blanket. "Ola Wishaa was 30. She was killed as well. And Ahmed was injured along with Mai and Sali. Luckily two of the other residents were away visiting their families."

It seems a miracle that anyone could have survived a strike that exploded in the very centre of the room where a fin and part of the guidance system remained embedded in the concrete.

A scorched bed stood to on side, damaged by the blast which blew out all the walls and left the palm trees in the garden as truncated stumps standing among the rubble.

"The bomb came straight through the roof," said Mohammad Bahri, a 22-year-old who lives next door. "About 4.30am two drones fired warning shots and then the jet came in and bombed."

The residents were barely mobile, said neighbours, spending their time in bed or in wheelchairs, and could not escape the building.

Imad Abu Shedek denied there had been missile fire nearby. "There was no resistance here. The guy upstairs, I heard he was maybe affiliated with Islamic Jihad, but he wasn't there. The first I knew was when I heard the air strike and got here and saw the bodies."

An Israeli military spokeswoman said she was looking into why the centre was targeted.