ShareGAZA: Airstrikes, destroyed houses and loved ones annihilated by bombs: Palestinians who fled the north of the Gaza Strip on Israeli orders have found no trace of the safety promised to them. Nada Abu Hiya is eight years old and suffered her third bombing of the war at the Nuseirat refugee camp on Friday.
“First they bombed my grandfather’s house where we lived” in Gaza City, she told AFP. “Then we went to Deir el-Balah, where we were bombed again. “So we came here and they bombed us again.” At dawn on Friday a Zionist plane bombed the Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killing 18 people according to health officials in the Hamas-run government. “There are bombings everywhere,” said Nada. “My grandmother is dead, my mother is dead, my grandfather is dead, my uncle is dead, they destroyed our house. Our neighbors’ house is also destroyed and they are all dead.”
The child is among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City and other parts of the north in recent weeks after Zionist forces ordered residents to move south as they wage a military offensive to oust the territory’s Hamas rulers. In all, more than 1.5 million people have been displaced in Gaza, nearly two-thirds of the territory’s population, according to the United Nations.
The Zionist entity has vowed to “crush” Hamas in response to the group’s October 7 attack, when it broke through Gaza’s militarized border. About 1,200 people, most of them civilians, died that day and around 240 hostage were taken by Hamas, according to Zionist officials. The Zionist army’s air and ground campaign has killed 12,000 people, including 5,000 children, according to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.
On Thursday, the Zionist forces dropped thousands leaflets on some areas of Khan Younis, ordering residents to evacuate. It was not clear where residents in eastern Khan Younis were expected to flee as the Zionist entity continues its bombardment in areas in the south where Palestinians were previously ordered to relocate for their safety. “We have been absolutely clear that at the current moment, we do not consider any part of Gaza to be safe,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said Thursday.
‘I’m your mother’
The victims of Friday’s bombing at Nuseirat included seven of Azhar al-Rifi’s relatives, three of them children. It was the second time that her family had been bombed. Rifi, 36, first fled the north to stay with relatives in Deir el-Balah, only for their house to be destroyed. She then sought refuge at the Nuseirat camp.
Rifi was admitted to hospital in Deir el-Balah with leg injuries, while her two-year-old son Mohammed survived with a head injury. “They said the south was safer, so we moved,” she said. But her five-year-old nephew Joud was killed. “Two weeks ago, his mother died, so my husband decided that he would live with us,” she said. “He arrived last night and said to me: ‘Now that my mother is dead, I can no longer call anyone mom’. “I replied: ‘I’m your mother’.” The boy went to sleep in a room with 12 other children, she said. “At four in the morning he was taken away from us.” – Agencies
