‘My children, my children’: Gaza family killed minutes before shooting ends | Israel-Palestine Conflicts News

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Palestine – The ceasefire in Gaza was due to start at 8.30am (06:30 GMT). The al-Qidra family endured 15 months of Israeli attacks. They have been evicted more than once and are living in a tent. Their relatives were among the more than 46,900 Palestinians killed by Israel.

But the al-Qidras had survived. And they wanted to go home.

Ahmed al-Qidra packed his seven children into a donkey cart and headed east to Khan Younis. It was finally safe to go – the bombing had to stop.

But the family did not know that the agreement between Israel and Hamas was delayed. Little did they know that, even in those few extra hours, Israeli planes were still flying over the skies of Gaza, ready to drop their bombs.

The explosion was loud. Ahmed’s wife Hanan heard. She was staying at a relative’s house in the middle of the city, organizing their things, planning to leave with her husband and children in a few hours.

“The explosion felt like it hit my heart,” Hanan said. He suddenly realized that something had happened to his children whom he had just said goodbye to.

“My children, my children!” he shouted.

The cart had been hit. Hanan’s eldest son, Adly, 16, had died. So is little Sama, six years old, a home child.

Yasmin, 12, explained that the four-wheeled cart was in front of the cart carrying people who were celebrating the ceasefire. Maybe that was the reason for the missile crash.

“I saw Sama and Adly lying on the ground, my father bleeding from the cart unconscious,” said Yasmin. He pulled his 8-year-old sister Aseel out before the second missile hit where they had been. Eleven-year-old Mohammed also survived.

But Ahmed, Hanan’s life partner, was found dead at the hospital.

‘My children were my world’

Sitting on the edge of her injured daughter Iman’s bed at Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, Hanan was still in shock.

“Where was the ceasefire?” he asked. In their excitement to finally return to whatever was left of their home, the family had missed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announcing that the Palestinian group Hamas had not sent the names of three Israeli hostages to be released on Sunday as part of the group. ceasefire agreement.

They did not see Hamas explain that there were technical reasons for the delay, and that the names would be given, as they were eventually given.

Little did they know that three hours before the ceasefire began, three members of their family would be killed. They were among 19 Palestinians killed by Israel in the past few hours, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense.

Hanan cried. Now she would have to face life without her husband and without her two children. Losing Sama, “the last of the group” as he describes him in Arabic, was very difficult.

“Sama was my youngest and he wasted a lot. He got angry every time I talked about having another child.”

Adly had been his “pillar of support”. His children were his world.

“We have endured the whole war, we are facing very difficult conditions of being fired and bombarded,” said Hanan. “My children were facing hunger, lack of food and basic needs.”

“We survived this war for more than a year, they were killed in the last minutes. How is this possible?”

A happy day had turned into a nightmare. The family had celebrated the end of the war the day before.

“Hasn’t the Israeli army had enough of our blood and the atrocities they have committed for 15 months?” Hanan asked.

Then he thought about his future. With her husband and two children lost to her, and tears streaming down her face, she asked: “What is left?”