‘My children, my children’: Gaza family killed minutes before ceasefire | Israel-Palestine conflict news
Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Palestine – The ceasefire in Gaza was to begin at 8.30 am (06:30 GMT). The al-Qidra family endured 15 months of Israeli attacks. He had been displaced more than once and was living in a tent. His relatives were among the more than 46,900 Palestinians killed by Israel.
But Al-Qidras was saved. And they wanted to go home.
Ahmad al-Qidra put his seven children on a donkey cart and headed towards the eastern Khan Yunis. It was finally safe to travel – the bombing had to stop.
But the family did not know that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas had been delayed. What they didn’t know was that, even in those extra few hours, Israeli planes were still flying in the skies over Gaza, ready to drop their bombs.
The explosion was huge. Ahmed’s wife Hanan heard this. She was staying at a relative’s house in the city center, organizing their belongings, planning to meet her husband and children a few hours later.
“The explosion felt like it hit my heart,” Hanan said. She knew instinctively that something had happened to her children, whom she had just said goodbye to.
“My child, my child!” she shouted.
The car was hit. Hanan’s eldest son, 16-year-old Adli, was killed. Her youngest, six-year-old Sama, was the only child of the family.
12-year-old Yasmin told that there was a four-wheeler in front of the vehicle, in which people celebrating the ceasefire were riding. Perhaps this is why the missile fell.
“I saw Sama and Adly lying on the ground, and my father lying on the cart, covered in blood and unconscious,” Yasmin said. Before the second missile hit the spot where they were, she pulled her eight-year-old sister Aseel out. Eleven-year-old Mohammed also survived.
But Hanan’s life partner Ahmed was declared dead in the hospital.
‘My children were my world’
Sitting at the bedside of her injured daughter Iman at Nasir Hospital in Khan Younis, Hanan was still in shock.
“Where was the armistice?” he asked. In their excitement to finally get back what was left of their home, the family ignored Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that the Palestinian group Hamas had not sent the names of three Israeli captives, who were released on Sunday Will go. Armistice agreement.
He did not see Hamas explain that there were technical reasons for the delay, and that the names would be provided, as they were eventually provided.
Little did he know that in the three-hour delay before the ceasefire began, three members of his family would be killed. According to Gaza’s Civil Defense, they were among 19 Palestinians killed by Israel in the past few hours.
Hanan started crying bitterly. Now she has to face life without her husband and without her two children. The loss of Sama, “the last of the group”, as she described him with the Arabic proverb, was particularly difficult.
“My uncle was the youngest and most spoiled one. “She would get angry whenever I talked about having another child.”
Adley was his “pillar of support”. His children were his world.
“We endured this entire war, facing the most difficult conditions of displacement and bombardment,” Hanan said. “My children were struggling with hunger, lack of food and basic needs.”
“We survived this war for more than a year, only for them to die in its final moments. How can this happen?”
The happy day had turned into a nightmare. The family had celebrated the end of the war the night before.
“Was the Israeli army not happy with our blood and the atrocities it carried out for 15 months?” Hanan asked.
Then, he thought about his future. As her husband and her two children turned away from her, and with tears streaming down her face, she asked: “What’s left?”
