An Israeli strike on Gaza’s largest fertility clinic destroyed all of its frozen embryos and unfertilized eggs, leaving hundreds of infertile couples unable to ever have children.

The Al Basma IVF centre, in Gaza City, is where most of the territory’s frozen embryos and other specimens are stored when couples go through IVF.

The strike on the clinic, which happened in December, blasted the lids off five liquid nitrogen tanks stored in a corner of the embryology unit.

As the liquid evaporated, the temperature inside the tanks rose, destroying more than 4,000 embryos plus 1,000 more specimens of sperm and unfertilized eggs.

The embryos in those tanks were the last hope for hundreds of Palestinian couples facing infertility, doctors have said.

According to a Reuters-commissioned journalist who visited the site this month, the embryology lab is still strewn with broken masonry, blown-up lab supplies and, amid the rubble, the liquid nitrogen tanks.

The lids were open and, still visible at the bottom of one of the tanks, a basket was filled with tiny colour-coded straws containing the ruined microscopic embryos.