Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Leaning heavily on the arm of a relative, Hayat al-Ajlah moves slowly between the hospital beds, scanning the faces of the injured. She is looking for her eight-year-old daughter, Dalia. Hayat has not seen her since they were pulled from beneath the rubble of the al-Saada building in western Gaza City early on Wednesday, when the war-damaged structure collapsed over their heads.
It felt like something was falling from underneath us.” Moments later, the building came down, killing at least 21 Palestinians. Hayat found herself trapped beneath the rubble, surrounded by dust and darkness, with family members screaming for help. For nearly an hour, neighbours and civil defence workers worked to pull Hayat, her children and some of the other residents from the rubble.
But Hayat knew that others were trapped deeper inside the building. Her four children survived, although her daughter Dalia was taken to hospital with a serious head injury. The collapse had come suddenly, but Hayat said there had been warning signs.
The family had been displaced from Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood to Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, during an earlier phase of Israel’s genocidal war, before returning about two months ago. With few alternatives, and many in Gaza still living in tents because of Israeli restrictions on reconstruction, the family moved into an empty apartment on the third floor of the damaged residential building after a friend of Hayat’s father told him it was available. It was severely damaged, but my family wanted to get out of the tent and escape its harsh conditions,” Hayat said.
Many members of her extended family were in the building when the tragedy struck because they had been preparing for a celebration – a family wedding planned for next week. The whole family is either dead or injured,” Hayat said. At Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, relatives of the victims have gathered in grief and shock, waiting for the lengthy recovery operation to continue and for news of those still missing.
Umm Mahmoud Saada, in her 70s, stood crying for her son Mahmoud, his wife and their children. Mahmoud, 38, was the father of six girls and a boy. Neither Mahmoud nor his family survived.
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