Gaza teenager sees parents, siblings killed after seeking safety in south
Gaza City to flee south because it was safer, 18-year-old Dima Al-Lamdani's family prayed they would escape relentless air strikes.
But days later, Lamdani was left to identify the bodies of her relatives at a makeshift morgue in the southern city of Khan Younis. She said she lost her parents, seven siblings and four members of her uncle's family in an Israeli air strike.
«They told us to evacuate your place and go to Khan Younis because it is safe… They betrayed us and bombed us,» she said.
She said her family and that of her uncle travelled in two cars across Gaza, which has faced the heaviest bombardment after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an attack into Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages.
Lamdani's family was staying at a temporary shelter in Khan Younis when she said: «At 4.30 a.m.
I was awake and sitting with my aunt drinking coffee. Suddenly I woke up in the middle of ruins. Everyone around me was screaming, so I screamed.»
Lamdani, the side of her face grazed and bruised, said after searching for her family members in the morgue on Oct.
17, that only her brother and two young cousins had survived but had sustained some injuries.
«This is a nightmare. It will never be wiped from my memory,» she said.
