DaysofPal: After 15 months of nonstop bombardment, a ceasefire in Gaza was agreed to start at 8:30 am (06:30 GMT) in the hopes of providing relief. It was a chance to return home for the al-Qidra family, who had endured multiple relocations and the death of family members among the 46,900 Palestinians slain.
Eager to return to eastern Khan Younis, Ahmed al-Qidra packed his seven children onto a donkey cart. Unaware that the ceasefire had been delayed, they set off, believing the bombing had stopped. Then, an Israeli airstrike struck.
“The blast felt like it hit my heart,” said Ahmed’s wife, Hanan, who had stayed behind to pack belongings. Instinctively, she screamed, “My children, my children!”
The strike killed 16-year-old Adly, the eldest, and six-year-old Sama, the youngest. Ahmed succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. Yasmin, 12, recalled pulling her eight-year-old sister Aseel from the wreckage moments before a second missile struck.
Yasmin, 12, explained that a four-wheel drive was in front of the cart carrying people celebrating the ceasefire. Perhaps that was the reason the missile hit.
“I saw Sama and Adly lying on the ground, and my father bleeding and unconscious on the cart,” Yasmin said. She pulled her eight-year-old sister Aseel out before a second missile hit the spot where they had been. Eleven-year-old Mohammed also survived.
Sitting on the edge of her injured daughter Iman’s hospital bed in Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, Hanan was still shell-shocked.
“Where was the ceasefire?” Hanan asked from her daughter’s hospital bedside, tears streaming down her face. “We endured this war, facing hunger, displacement, and constant bombardment, only to lose them in its last minutes.”
Hanan described Sama as “the last of the bunch,” cherished and spoiled, and Adly as her “pillar of support.” Now, with her husband and two children gone, she is left grappling with the unbearable loss.
“What’s left?” she asked, her voice heavy with grief. “Hasn’t the Israeli army had enough of our blood?”
A day meant for celebration had become a nightmare, leaving Hanan and her surviving children to face an uncertain future amid their unimaginable pain.
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