One minute, Haya Shabaka was brewing tea in her sister Abeer’s Gaza City home. The next, she and her relatives were plunged into darkness, said Abeer Shabaka, who was in the other room when an Israeli strike hit their building on Dec. 6.
“I felt that we were all underground,” Abeer recounted. “I heard my mother scream, but I did not know where she was. I saw Haya. She looked like she was asleep.”
Abeer said she screamed and screamed until help came, and was eventually pulled from the rubble. Her mother and sister are still buried underneath.
“I wish I had been killed with them,” Abeer said. The Israeli military said it was targeting a gathering of militants.
Without their bodies, or confirmation of their deaths, their family was unable to register them with Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
They remain uncounted.
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