Gaza Metropolis – On the primary day of Eid al-Adha, Widad Al-Husari, 31, sat together with her husband, kids, and prolonged household on a rooftop in Gaza City, attempting to create a way of vacation spirit amid an ongoing warfare and displacement.
The household had dinner, then shared sweets, whereas the kids, wearing new garments, performed of their tent erected on the terrace till an explosion shattered the night silence.
Widad rushed to the tent and picked up her three-year-old son, Rafiq, however within the panic, they plummeted by means of a gap attributable to a missile that had penetrated the constructing.
The remainder of the household adopted her screams and located Widad clinging to her baby and hanging from steel rods protruding from masonry a number of flooring under. Beneath them, a fireplace raged, attributable to a warhead that had detonated simply seconds earlier.
“I didn’t discover the openings… It was darkish in every single place and smoke crammed the place. I used to be solely holding my baby after I immediately fell with him into a gap,” Widad instructed Al Jazeera.
Widad factors to a few holes in the midst of the terrace, the place the missiles struck, one among them the hole she had fallen by means of.
“I might really feel the warmth of the fireplace beneath me… Everybody was screaming, smoke crammed the place, and I used to be hanging [from the metal rods] till my husband and brothers managed to tug me out with my baby,” she stated.
“Once they [pulled] the iron rods reduce my physique, my legs, and my again. I lived by means of moments of hell, like a horror film, and I nonetheless undergo from extreme ache and worry to this second. We had been sitting consuming Eid sweets, then immediately all the things became screams.”
The strike killed seven folks, together with two kids and two ladies. Eighteen had been injured, together with her four-year-old niece, Sara al-Khalout, who was thrown by the blast onto the courtyard under. She was significantly injured and remains to be being handled in an intensive care unit.
Sixty-year-old Zuhdia Azzam, who lived in one of many decrease flooring of the constructing, was together with her household receiving company for Eid when a missile struck.
In a single second, her 12-year-old granddaughter, Sidra, was killed, and one other granddaughter, Sham, 11, had her leg amputated.
“The state of affairs was utterly calm till we heard an enormous explosion… All of us rushed to the higher flooring the place each granddaughters had gone simply moments earlier,” Azzam instructed Al Jazeera.
“We discovered one among them killed and the opposite holding her leg that had been reduce off. She was crawling. It doesn’t matter to Israel whether or not it’s Eid, an event, or a densely populated civilian space – immediately [a missile] is above your head.”
‘No protected place’
The household’s experiences are much like these of 1000’s of others in Gaza, who escaped one war zone for another through the 31-month genocide, with drones and warplanes showing to stalk their each motion.
Widad and her household as soon as lived in a snug house within the Zeitoun neighbourhood of jap Gaza Metropolis, till it was destroyed in November 2023, a month into Israel’s genocidal warfare on Gaza.
With their family’ houses already teeming with different displaced households, the one refuge Widad might discover was the rooftop of a constructing rented by her brother.
She and her husband had hoped their new rooftop house would supply a haven for her kids. That was till the Israeli warplanes struck once more.
“I by no means imagined in my life that we might be bombed on this method. What if the missile had landed on me or one among my kids earlier than piercing the roof? Simply excited about it’s terrifying,” she stated.
“Anybody who says the warfare has ended is mendacity. The ceasefire is a giant lie, we dwell in every day worry, and there’s no protected place.”
No ceasefire
Though a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has been in impact since October 2025, about 930 Palestinians have been killed and greater than 2,800 injured in continued Israeli assaults throughout this era.
Condominium blocks, markets, autos, and cafes are nonetheless hit with out warning, leaving widespread destruction and trauma amongst civilians.
Some households are given pressured displacement orders by the Israeli army simply minutes earlier than their houses are became rubble. It’s by no means sufficient time to avoid wasting their belongings, and even when they survive, they’re among the many a whole bunch of 1000’s of different Palestinians trying to find a brand new house in a devastated panorama.
Within the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza Metropolis, 55-year-old Imad Khroub was sitting along with his household of their house, celebrating the second day of Eid al-Adha, when his son, Saad, 31, acquired a cellphone name from the Israeli army intelligence. The voice ordered them and different residents to depart the house block, and quarter-hour later, an air strike levelled the constructing.
“We had been dwelling pleased moments, however immediately everybody was crying, screaming, and working… It was extraordinarily terrifying,” he instructed Al Jazeera.
“How might anybody handle? We took nothing. We left with solely the garments we had been carrying.”
![Imad Khroub lost his home after an Israeli strike targeted the residential block where he lived in Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, following an evacuation order issued only minutes before the attack [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/ Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/873A1622-1780818187.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80)
Inspecting the particles of his house, Saad noticed that the years of onerous work and financial savings to arrange his house for his upcoming marriage ceremony had been decreased to nothing.
“It by no means occurred to me, even 1 %, that our home could be hit,” Saad stated.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights warned that Israel’s continued assaults on Gaza’s remaining residential blocks are creating an atmosphere incompatible with human existence or dignity.
An space that has been the main focus of Israeli air raids in latest months has been central Gaza, which has been much less closely broken through the genocide than different components of the enclave, and so affords essentially the most targets.
The centre stated “evacuation warnings” don’t give Israel authorized justification for the destruction of houses, nor take away the protections afforded to civilians underneath worldwide humanitarian legislation.
Amid repeated pressured displacement orders and bombings of houses, Khroub says the warfare continues to comply with him in every single place, regardless of the ceasefire.
“We thought we had been fortunate and had survived and that our house was nonetheless intact… however now we’re again to sq. one,” he stated. “The warfare remains to be raging fiercely, solely in a quieter type… and nobody is taking note of us.”
