It has been six days since Dina Alalami heard from her family in Gaza City after receiving a text message from a relative informing her that they were alive.
The 33-year-old mother of two, who has lived in Doha, the capital of Qatar, for five years, does not know whether her sister, two brothers-in-law, two nephews and three other family members are still alive or if they are deceased. victim of Israeli bombings which killed more than 11,500 people in Gaza.
“On Friday, November 10, they decided to leave their house and head south because Israeli tanks had closed in and were surrounding the area,” Dina told Tel Aviv Tribune on Thursday.
“They made this decision because they said they wouldn’t make it through the night if they stayed. We called the Red Cross and asked them to help us ensure safe passage. »
But the Red Cross and Red Crescent said they were unable to help.
The family left their home on November 10 during the four-hour break – a day after Israel announced a daily four-hour window to allow Palestinians to flee from the north to the south.
Around noon, the family left the house waving white flags. Dina’s two sisters, married to two brothers, had left their home on the first day of the war to live in their in-laws’ villa, also in Gaza City.
Dina was talking on the phone with her youngest sister Rulla as the group moved cautiously forward when suddenly screams pierced the air. Their other sister, Lina, had collapsed on the ground, blood streaming down her shirt after an Israeli tank fired on them.
Rulla dragged Lina to the entrance of the Bakri building on Shuhada Street and tried to give her first aid. She saw a gunshot wound to her sister’s chest.
But as the Israeli tank fire continued, Rulla had no choice but to leave her and run inside. Bashar Khayal, Rulla’s husband, was shot in the hand and his sister Dalia was also injured.
Behind them, Feryal, Bashar and Dalia’s grandmother, lay motionless in the street, killed.
Rulla explained to Dina where exactly they were and begged her to contact the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to save them. The building was behind the al-Zaytoun pharmacy, Rulla said, near the Abbas intersection.
Dina called the ICRC. They told him they couldn’t go to the area.
“The worst feeling in the world”
The next day, Saturday, Dina received the news she had been dreading. Lina was dead, her body still at the entrance to the building.
Dalia had also been killed, succumbing to her injuries.
Lina’s two young boys, Mohammad, four, and Majed, nine months, were among those trapped inside the building along with their father Tareq Khayal, grandmother Dalia, aunt Suha, Rulla and Bashar. They had no food, water or electricity.
With their phone batteries drained, Suha was able to send Dina one last message: “We are alive.”
Dina flew this weekend to Cairo, Egypt, where her father lives alone, and was joined by her brother who lives in Dubai.
“The mere thought of these two young boys not having water to drink or food to eat, the thought that they could die of dehydration or starvation…” his voice trailed off, his breath taken away.
“It’s the worst feeling in the world, this helplessness,” she said. “My sister was killed and her body is still lying in the street. There is no respect for the dead, and that alone burns our hearts.
More than 11,300 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since October 7, the majority of them women and children. The health system has collapsed due to the total siege imposed on the territory by Israel, and on Wednesday Israeli forces attacked the Strip’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, carrying out their previous threats despite the patients and the thousands of displaced people who found refuge there. .
Dina last visited Gaza this summer for Rulla’s wedding to Bashar. The two had been engaged for seven years and married in August after Rulla finished medical school in Egypt.
“My sisters are six and seven years younger than me, so we were like best friends,” Dina said.
“I wish I was with them right now. I wish we died or lived together.