Ahlam a-Taluli

A 33-year-old, journalist and photographer from Jabalya RC, Ahlam described being displaced from her home to a school to a hospital throughout 2024. She was killed in early 2025 while trying to reach a spot with internet access.

Since the war started, the Israeli military has been bombing northern Gaza indiscriminately. My home in the Tel a-Za’atar neighborhood of Jabalya Refugee Camp was also hit. After that, we moved to an IDP camp in one of the Abu Zaytoun schools in Jabalya RC.

My father, Nafez a-Taluli, 59, couldn’t come with us. He lost a leg in the second intifada and gets around in a wheelchair. On top of that, he has diabetes, high blood pressure and cirrhosis. He had to stay home alone.

Life in the IDP camp was unbelievably hard, especially in October and November 2023. We were terrified all the time because of the random bombings, and the place was overcrowded and filthy, but we had nowhere else to go. There wasn’t enough food, no humanitarian aid, and prices in the market were sky high so we couldn’t buy groceries.

When the ceasefire ended in early December, things got even worse. The military surrounded Tel a-Za’atar and put snipers on rooftops. On Tuesday, 5 December 2023, my mother and my father’s second wife went to check on him and bring him food. On their way back, right in front of our house, my father’s second wife was shot and killed by snipers. My mother wasn’t hit—just by sheer luck.

From then until 15 December, my father barely had any food or water. That day, the military forced everyone out of their homes and ordered them to leave. My father left with the neighbors, and as they got close to Abu Khater Hall in Jabalya RC, snipers shot and killed him. A neighbor told us about it. After we heard, my mother, my siblings and I decided to take the risk and go look for him. We found his body and buried him behind the Abu Zaytoun schools.

Life inside the schools kept getting worse. The hardest months for us were January, February and March. No aid got in, there was almost no flour, and even when it did appear in the shops, it was very expensive and we couldn’t buy it. We nearly starved to death. That was the worst weapon—starvation. But even with everything—the hunger, the bombings, the deaths of my father and his wife—we managed to survive.

At the start of March, a day or two before Ramadan, my brother Nimer a-Taluli, 26, a father of three, went to a-Nabulsi Square to try and get us food and flour. That was the last time we heard from him. To this day, we don’t know what happened to him.

On Wednesday, 15 May 2024, tanks invaded Jabalya RC and reached the Abu Zaytoun schools. We were trapped. No one could go in and out of the school. That morning, at around 7:00 or 8:00 A.M., I can’t remember exactly, a man came running and said his son had been injured and needed help. My sister Maryam, 25, asked where he was. When the man told her he was out on the street, she went out to help him. I was standing at the school door with my mother. Maryam walked out waving a white flag. She managed to take a few steps and then stopped in the middle of the street, I don’t know what she saw, and ran towards me. Just then, a sniper shot her in the back. The bullet came out through her stomach and she fell down. She just looked at us, completely still, not saying a word. I said, “Maryam, come, try to drag yourself so we can get you inside.” She couldn’t move. Then they shot her again, four more bullets. She died right in front of us. My mother and I ran back inside the school. We had to leave Maryam lying there.

There were exchanges of fire in the area and the bombings got even worse, from every direction. The houses across from the school were bombed. Then the soldiers sent two men we didn’t know into us, carrying fuel canisters to set fire to the school and the classrooms. Meanwhile, bulldozers tore down the fence of the school and the toilets, and burned all the tents of the displaced people.

Several tanks and a bulldozer entered every school. The place turned into a death trap. We wanted to bury Maryam, but the soldiers told us to go west and that they would take care of the body. One of them told my mother, “Don’t worry, I give you my word, I’ll bury her.” Later, a neighbor who stayed behind until around 10:00 P.M. because her parents were ill and it was hard for them to leave, told us she’d seen the soldiers lift Maryam’s body with a bulldozer and cover her with sand.

Now we’re displaced not only from our home, but from the IDP camp. We’re staying with relatives in the a-Sheikh Radwan area in the western part of Gaza City, but even here it’s not really safe or liveable. There aren’t even proper toilets. We’ve been through wars before, but this one is the worst in every way – the destruction, bombings, starvation, displacement, deaths and loss. Here, we get a food package every two weeks. We can’t even buy vegetables in the market because the prices are insane. A kilogram of onions has gone up to 120 shekels.

The northern Gaza Strip has been destroyed, especially Jabalya RC. Words can’t even describe how bad it is here. We’re waiting for the military to withdraw so we can go back to the camp and look for my sister’s body.

In June 2024, after the military pulled out of the Jabalya area, Ahlam went home with her mother, sisters and younger brother. By late November 2024, the family had to move to the Indonesian Hospital when the military reinvaded the area. On 23 December 2024, soldiers raided the hospital and ordered the staff, patients and displaced people to leave. That day, Ahlam recorded an oral testimony for B’Tselem:

After the army invaded our area again in October 2024, things got much worse and the situation became dangerous. Everyone left the area except us and a few others. By the end of November 2024, I moved with my mother, my three sisters and our little brother to the Indonesian Hospital where my sister Rim worked as a nurse, because we had nowhere else to go and we didn’t want to stay in a tent on the street.

Then the army reached the area of the Indonesian Hospital and began firing from quadcopters at its windows. Every time the quadcopters approached, we moved from the rooms, which overlooked the street from Hamudah Junction toward Zayed Square, the corridors, which were more protected. That happened every night when they came in.

On the first day they arrived, they entered the school next to the hospital and took all the displaced people out. No one was allowed to stay in the school. People were forced to leave while quadcopters flew overhead to ensure they didn’t turn left or right. The soldiers used two detainees as human shields to show them the way.

The army stayed in the area and sent the two detainees into the hospital to tell us we had to leave, but we had nowhere to go. My mother can’t walk properly because of worn cartilage, and apart from us, there were only two or three other families of displaced people in the hospital along with patients and staff—people who couldn’t make it on foot to western Gaza.

The army threatened us and warned us three times. One time, they shelled or bombed the roof, the third floor. They destroyed most of the water containers on the roof and also damaged the communications antenna and the generators. They stopped ambulances and supplies from reaching the hospital, which made the shortage of food and medicine worse.

We’re still at the hospital and the army is really close—sometimes soldiers even come into the building. They blew up a robot in Tel a-Za’atar, across from the hospital. It was a massive explosion that caused damage and injuries even inside the hospital. Every night the army comes close, there are explosions, then they retreat—and only then do we dare go to sleep. We’re living here in fear. The hospital gate is locked, and no one is allowed in or out. When soldiers enter the hospital, they order us to stay away from the windows and the door, which must stay closed. Everything is forbidden. We’re not allowed to move, any movement leads to shooting.

In the last two days, I’ve reached out to various people and asked them to advocate for us with governments, the World Health Organization and the Red Cross, on behalf of the people trapped in hospitals here, in the Indonesian Hospital, al-Awdah and Kamal Adwan. We can see and hear the attacks on Kamal Adwan from here because it’s so close. We’re civilians, not terrorists. We have no weapons. We are displaced people, sick people, caregivers of other sick people and medical staff—innocent people.

We hope all the time for this war to end, for people here to get the treatment they need, for food and diesel to reach the hospitals and the medical equipment to be repaired. Most hospitals have already stopped operating following the attacks on them.

On 29 December 2024, Ahlam aTaluli sent B’Tselem a final recording describing how she and her family left the hospital:

On Tuesday, 24 December 2024, at 3:00 A.M., a lot of planes flew over the Tel a-Za’atar area and there was heavy bombing. When it stopped, tanks came near and began firing. At first, we thought it was more of the same, tanks passing by and firing live shots. But this time, it was different.

The tanks stopped in front of the western gate and began firing on it while calling for Dr. Elias and for Yusef Abu Rukbah, who was in charge of the laboratory, to come to the gate. They didn’t stop firing at the building. Meanwhile, the army bombed the tall buildings opposite the hospital in Tel a-Za’atar area, which started fires and leveled the area.

The soldiers ordered everyone in the hospital to come down to the reception. We all went down, including the medical staff and patients, and then they ordered everyone to leave except for Dr. Elias, the maintenance engineer ‘Abed and two nurses, who were supposed to stay with some patients who couldn’t walk. We stayed downstairs in the reception area. At 4:30, we went out to the gate and stood in front of the tank. We started walking with one tank ahead of us, one behind us and one to our left, and a quadcopter flying overhead. We also saw tanks by the eastern gate of the hospital. The whole area was leveled.

We all went toward Salah a-Din Road, where the soldiers put us in a shed they used for interrogations. They sat the women on the side and took the men. Military intelligence officers interrogated them one by one. After about half an hour, they released all the women and told us to go west. They confiscated our belongings. I only learned afterwards that they released all the men except for 16 young men they detained.

Thank God, we managed to reach western Gaza safely and settled into the home of Iman, a nurse who works with my sister Rim. We simply have nowhere else to go.

We later learned that the day after we left the Indonesian Hospital, the army transferred patients from Kamal Adwan Hospital there, including ones in critical condition. The hospital has no infrastructure to support them – no generators, water or food. I hope everyone survives.

* Ahlam a-Taluli was killed on 13 January 2025, about two weeks after recording her last testimony, when she went to the area of a-Ghafari Junction to access the internet and a nearby house was bombed.

** Read a testimony given by Ahlam’s mother, Asmahan a-Taluli, about six months before her daughter was killed.