A 30-year-old from al-Maghazi Refugee Camp, Yumna described an airstrike on the IDP shelter in a-Razi School in a-Nuseirat RC that killed her father and brother:
Until the war, our entire family lived east of al-Maghazi Refugee Camp in central Gaza: my father Yunes, 59, my mother, and us, six daughters and five sons. A year before the war, I got engaged to a young man from Nablus, from a family we knew. I tried several times to get there by appealing to civil society organizations in Gaza and to human rights groups, but all the attempts failed.
We left our house on the first day of the war because it was close to the border. We took only personal effects and some clothes, thinking we would be away for a short time. We moved to my paternal grandfather’s house, at the edge of the new camp, in northern a-Nuseirat Refugee Camp, next to Hassan al-Banna Mosque. Two of my paternal aunts also moved there with their families. We were about 30 people in my grandfather’s house, which had two rooms and a living room. It was very crowded. We stayed there for about two months.
One night, I don’t remember the date, the occupation army bombed the mosque, and the rubble fell on the asbestos roof of my grandfather’s house. Immediately after that, despite the rain and cold, we left the house without taking anything and went to the nearest UNRWA school. When we arrived, the school was already full of IDPs, and there was no room in the classrooms or offices. We had to sleep on the floor in the hallways, and we were very cold.
In the morning, we went back to my grandfather’s house and found that all our bedding and clothes were wet from the rain, because the roof was destroyed in the bombing. We gathered everything and moved to my paternal uncle’s house in a more western area of the new camp, near the neighborhood known as “Prisoners’ City” and the towers of a-Zahraa. These areas were heavily bombed. About 20-25 people lived in that house, and after about two weeks, because of the nearby airstrikes, we decided to leave again and return to our own house east of al-Maghazi. Three days after we returned, warplanes bombed land nearby, and all the windows in the house shattered. We covered them with plastic sheets and stayed.
At the beginning of January 2024, we got a phone call from the Israeli military ordering us to evacuate the area. We moved to my maternal uncle’s house in a-Nuseirat Refugee Camp and stayed there for about a week, until the military dropped leaflets ordering everyone to move to areas it claimed were safe in Rafah.
We had a hard time finding transport because of the severe fuel shortage. In the end, we paid 700 NIS (~ 210 USD) for a pickup truck to take us and our belongings, including clothes, mattresses, and kitchenware, to al-Mawasi in Rafah. We lived there, in a tent that cost us about 1,800 NIS (~ 540 USD), for about a month in extremely harsh conditions. It was very hot during the day and cold at night, and there was a severe shortage of water for drinking and hygiene. Food prices in Rafah were astronomically high, and we couldn't afford them.
We returned to a-Razi School in a-Nuseirat Refugee Camp and moved into a classroom, where we are still staying today.
On Tuesday, 16 July 2024, at around 2:00 P.M., I was in the classroom with my mother and sisters. My father and my brother Zeid, 18, were in a tent in the schoolyard waiting for lunch when the Israeli military suddenly bombed the school. I looked out the window and saw the destruction, dust, and rubble in the yard. Everyone there was hit. We all rushed down to the yard and frantically searched for my father and Zeid among the dismembered bodies and the wounded. Many were missing limbs. The sight was horrifying.
I found the body of my brother Zeid, who was injured in the abdomen. When I saw him, I became hysterical and started screaming. I wandered around the yard barefoot, even though the ground was scorching hot from the bombing, and didn't know what to do. I saw my uncles, who were also displaced at the school, lifting my father wrapped in a blanket, and I fainted. When I came to, I was back in the classroom and learned that my father had also been killed in the bombing. My sister Malak, 20, was injured in her leg.
My father was a livestock trader and my brother Zeid was a high school student. Their bodies were taken to Shuhadaa al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. We all went there, my mother, brothers and sisters, to say farewell. They were buried, along with another relative killed in the same bombing, in a mass grave in the cemetery in a-Zawaydah.
We are still living in the same school, despite the grief and pain it causes us, especially whenever we pass by the spot where my father and Zeid were killed. But we have nowhere else to go, and there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military bombs everywhere. Sometimes we manage to visit our home, which is near the border. It was bombed and severely damaged, and everything we left there was looted.
* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Khaled al-‘Azayzeh on 18 August 2024