Gazan man loses 103 relatives in Israel-Hamas war

Ahmad al-Ghuferi managed to survive the bomb that killed his family.

103 of his family members died in an attack on their home in Gaza City. He was 50 miles (80km) away in the town of Jericho in the West Bank.

Ahmad was working on a construction site in Tel Aviv when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. Because of the war and Israel’s military blockade, he couldn’t go back home to his wife and three young daughters.

Every day, he talked to them at the same time when the phones worked. On the evening of December 8th, he was on the phone with his wife, Shireen, when the attack happened.

“She knew she was going to die,” he said. “She asked me to forgive her for anything wrong she may have done to me in the past. ” I told her she didn’t have to say that. “And that was the final time we spoke to each other. ”

That night, a big bomb exploded at his uncle’s house and it killed his wife and three young daughters – Tala, Lana, and Najla.

It also killed Ahmad’s mother, four of his brothers, and their families, as well as many of his aunts, uncles, and cousins. Over 100 people have died. It has been over two months, and some of their bodies are still stuck under the collapsed buildings.

He celebrated his youngest daughter’s birthday last week. Najla would have been two years old. Ahmad is still having a hard time dealing with the loss.

He can’t hold his kids or be at their quick funerals. But he still talks about them like they are here, and he doesn’t show any emotion on his face even though he’s crying.

“He said his daughters are like little birds to him. ” I feel like I’m in a dream. I feel like I’m dreaming. I can’t believe what has happened to us.

He deleted the girls’ photos from his phone and computer screens, so he doesn’t see them unexpectedly.

He has to figure out what happened by asking some family and neighbors who are still alive.

They said a missile hit the front of his family’s house first.

“He said they quickly left and went to my uncle’s house close by. ” “Fifteen minutes later, a military airplane crashed into that house. ”

A family was killed in a four-story building near Sahaba Medical Centre in Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City.

It’s a pile of broken concrete with bits of colorful things in it, like a green cup and torn clothes.

The smashed up silver car with a twisted windshield is sitting under some concrete rocks.

Ahmad’s family member, Hamid al-Ghuferi, said to the BBC that people who ran up the hill when the strikes started lived, but those who stayed in the house died.

“It was a belt of fire,” he said. “There were bombs hitting the four houses beside ours. ” They were attacking a house every 10 minutes.

“He said 110 people from our family were there – including our kids and other relatives. ” “Almost all of them were killed, only a few survived. ”

Survivors said the oldest person who died was a 98-year-old grandma, and the youngest was a baby boy who was only nine days old.

Another family member, a cousin named Ahmad, talked about two large explosions from a bombing.

He said they didn’t tell us ahead of time. “If some people hadn’t left this area, I think hundreds would have died. ” The place looks very different now. There was a place to park cars, a place to store water, and four houses; three small houses and one big house. The explosion destroyed an entire neighborhood full of homes.

Hamid told that the people who lived through the accident had worked late into the night to get the bodies out from the fallen buildings.

Airplanes were flying in the sky, and small helicopters were shooting at us while we tried to get them down, said Ahmad.

“We were sitting in the house and then we were trapped under the debris,” Umm Ahmad al-Ghuferi said to the BBC. I was tossed back and forth. I don’t understand how they managed to rescue me. We saw someone die right in front of us.

It has been two and a half months, and they are still trying to reach some of the bodies that are buried under the collapsed buildings. The family saved money to rent a small machine to remove the rubble.

“We found four bodies today,” Ahmad said to the BBC. “This includes my brother’s wife and my nephew Mohammed, who was found in pieces. ” They were trapped under the fallen building for 75 days.

Their temporary graves are on a piece of empty land close by, and they are marked with sticks and plastic sheets.

Ahmad hasn’t been able to visit them in Jericho.

“Why can’t I be with my mom, wife, kids, and brothers. ” he wondered “They were all regular people. ”

We talked to the Israeli army about the family’s claim that they were attacked with air strikes. The army said it didn’t know about the attack and that they did their best to avoid hurting civilians in their fight against Hamas.

Israeli soldiers and Hamas gunmen fought very hard in the area of Shejaiyya, not far from the al-Ghuferi house, around the time when Ahmad’s family was killed.

On December 9th, the army said that they found some terrorists with missiles getting close to the soldiers in Shejaiyya. They called in a helicopter to attack them.

It also said that military planes had been attacking places where terrorists are.