A 47-year-old mother of seven from Gaza City displaced in Rafah, Hanan recounted the bombing that killed five of her children and two of her grandchildrenUntil the war, I lived with our children, Muhammad, 24, ‘Imad, 23, Bisan, 20, Akram, 19 and Nur, 11, in a building near Abu Mazen Square in Gaza City. My third son, Mus’ab, 26, is married and lives with his wife Aya, 26, and their daughter Julia, 3.5, in an apartment in the Tell al-Hawa neighborhood across from al-Quds Hospital. My daughter Afnan, 27, is also married and lives with her husband and their two children, Majd, 5, and Ranin, 1.5, in Deir al-Balah. She moved in with us on the second day of the war.In the first two days of the war, we heard relentless bombings and went through some very tough times. At night, we hid under the stairs. On 13 October 2023, the military told everyone in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate and go south. That same day, we all went to Deir al-Balah, including my married son and daughter and their families. We rented an apartment there in a three-story building.On 9 November, around 12:30 P.M., I was on the balcony with my two grandchildren, Julia and Majd. The rest of the family were inside, getting ready for lunch. Suddenly, I felt my body flying through the air, and then I fell on the floor. Julia and Majd crashed to the floor, too, and there was dust and debris everywhere. There was a lot of smoke too, and I could smell fire. My shoulder felt dislocated, and I couldn’t move or get up on my feet. Then I started feeling like the building was collapsing underneath me, until the third floor became the first floor.Ambulances came and took me and Julia to the hospital. Majd, who was with us, was killed in the bombing. At the hospital, I saw my sons ‘Imad and Akram, who were okay. Then they brought in the bodies of the rest of my family: my son Muhammad, my daughters Nur and Bisan, my daughter Afnan and her children, Majd and Ranin, and my son Mus’ab and his wife Aya. They were all killed in the bombing. When I saw their bodies, I lost my mind. I simply couldn’t move, or go over to them. I was hit by fragments in the left hand and had some wounds in my legs, and I really did dislocate my shoulder. The only ones left out of the entire family are me, my two sons ‘Imad and Akram, and my granddaughter Julia. Now I’m both father and mother to her, after her parents were killed although they did nothing wrong.The building where we were renting the apartment collapsed in the bombing, and other displaced people who were renting there were killed, too. Neighbors in nearby buildings were also killed.From that hospital, we moved to al-Aqsa Hospital, and then we moved with everyone who survived from the family to a school in the a-Zawaydah neighborhood that was turned into a field hospital. We stayed there for about two months, and then there were a lot of bombings in that area and we had to run away from there, too. We moved to an IDP camp in Rafah and we’ve been living here, in a tent, ever since. Our life is very hard. All we do is endlessly wait in line for the bathroom, for food to be handed out, for water. The overcrowding in the camp is really terrible, and inside the school building there’s thick smoke from fires people light to cook and bake bread.We’re surviving here, in the meantime, only thanks to the hope that the war ends soon and our daily suffering ends. That maybe we’ll wake up from this nightmare one day.Julia keeps asking about her parents, and she still expects them to return. I miss them a lot, too. We were very close and spent a lot of time together. They’ll never come back, and I cry over them a lot and over my other children and grandchildren.* Testimony given to B’Tselem field researcher Muhammad Sabah on 7 March 2024