A young Palestinian whose almost entire family was decimated by the war raging in Gaza recounts in a touching testimony the horrors she experienced.
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After finding herself without shelter for a second time last Friday, Nadeen Abdulatif began looking for shelter for her little brother and herself.
“Where am I supposed to go? says the 13-year-old girl. Children were killed here, 26 people were killed here.”
Reuters
“I’m terrified, I’m afraid and the idea that I could be killed or that my other brother could be killed keeps running through my head. I already lost my big brother, I can’t lose my little brother. I no longer have anyone,” she laments.
Nadeen was living with her family in Gaza City when the conflict broke out.
However, after their home was bombed and her older brother was killed, her family made the decision to leave the area and settle in Rafah, thinking it would be safer there.
Yet there is no safe place. The house next to theirs was destroyed in an attack.
“We slept in the sewers. We slept in strangers’ houses where we eventually found shelter. The house started to shake and the windows shattered,” laments Nadeen.
“What was I supposed to do? My brother was shaking, I was shaking. I was scared. I didn’t move because I was so terrified.”
Reuters
“Twenty-six people were killed. Many of them were children and women and we don’t deserve that,” says the young girl, pointing to the debris of the houses ravaged by the bombings.
“It is unfair! Why can’t we live normally? Children have been killed here! Children! Babies!”
Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip have killed 21,822 people, mostly women, children and adolescents, since the start of the war on October 7, according to the Hamas government.
– With information from Reuters and Agence France-Presse