Dalia Sa’id Bader (32), married with 6 children from Beit Lahia Housing Project, North Gaza.
My suffering started at 01:00 on 09 October 2023 when the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) bombed a building near our house, forcing us to evacuate to a relative’s house, which was away from the place bombed. We stayed there for 1 day as IOF called the house’s owners to evacuate immediately. We headed to al-Jadidah School in al-Sheikh Zayed area near the Indonesian Hospital, and stayed there until 09 November 2023. I was 7-month pregnant at the time, and there was heavy bombardment in the area, where all the buildings near the school were bombed, and dead bodies were falling on us due to the force of explosions.
At the school, we suffered a lot from lack of healthy food and clean water and had neither blankets nor windows to protect us from the bitter cold as all windows were broken after nearby buildings were bombed. I was cooking food and boiling water on fire, causing me respiratory problems.
I could not do my prenatal care checkups amid the ongoing war and was not taking my varicose veins medication because it was not available. I struggled to go to the bathroom as I had to go to the bathrooms in the Indonesian Hospital that had water and were kind of clean.
On 01 November 2023, IOF bombed the school gate, and many were killed and wounded while smoke filled the air that I could not find my daughters. At the time, I remained mentally paralyzed and nervous for an hour not knowing if my daughters were dead or alive. After knowing they were fine, I immediately decided to evacuate to the south. On my way out of school, I was wondering how I could afford transportation fees to reach the south as I left home with no money, so I borrowed some from a relative. On 09 November 2023, a week after leaving it, IOF surrounded the school, where there were my husband and parents-in-law, who did not evacuate due to their health condition and not being able to walk so long as the safe corridor, which was not safe at all, was 12 kilometers long. Therefore, my husband decided to stay with his parents while I headed to the south and could barely walk because I was pregnant.
I left school at 09:00 and took a donkey cart with my daughters. It dropped us at the Kuwaiti roundabout and from there we had to walk around 12 kilometers, and that was the real tragedy. As I told you I suffered from varicose veins and was 7-month pregnant … I saw dead and decomposed bodies scattered on the street and a lot of blood. I could not hold any of my daughters because I was very scared that IOF would shoot me. While crossing, IOF asked me to take off a shawl on my shoulders to see my belly clearly in order to be sure I was pregnant, and then allowed us to walk again. When I arrived at al-Nussairat, my brother and maternal uncle came to take us, and for an hour, I was trying to calm down my daughters who were scared to death from what they saw. My 11-year-old daughter, Jana, told me, “I do not want to die now, I am still young. I have not had a normal life and have not seen anything beautiful yet.” Meanwhile, my 12-year-old, Jumana, said, “Whom of us would die next?” Their words broke my heart and at the time I was in desperate need for help and psychological support especially that my husband was not with us. I could hardly find a place to seek refuge in and went to Deir al-Balah Martyrs School, where my father and brother slept in the corridors near the tent so my daughters and I could have space. A month later, I was registered as a displaced person at the school shelter, and all that time I could not talk to my husband or know anything about him.
At 03:00 on 09 January 2024, I started feeling labor contractions, so we called an ambulance but it was very hard to reach due to the communications blackout. I endured the pain reading Quran and praying for God to shower his mercy upon me. At 09:00, the communications returned and we called an ambulance. After 15 minutes, the ambulance arrived as luckily it was in the area at the time. There were 2 women in the ambulance on their way to give birth. While travelling, we saw a building bombed and there were many persons killed and injured. People tried to stop the ambulance to evacuate those killed and injured. We saw bodies chopped into pieces and many others injured, making us more nervous and more scared amid those horrible scenes. The ambulance driver called his colleagues to bring other ambulances and we continued our way to the hospital. When I arrived at the hospital, I was admitted to the labor room, where there were a lot of women waiting. I did blood tests which showed a low hemoglobin level of 8, so the doctor told me I should stay at the hospital. We were four women in every one room without partitions while the windows were of transparent glass and can be seen through. I suffered a lot at the hospital as there were no soap, no blankets and no pillows amid lack of medical care. I stayed there from noon to 18:00 waiting for God’s mercy. The nurse only gave me a quarter pill under tongue to induce labor and told me if I did not deliver until 20:00, I would undergo a C-section due to my serious condition. After only 15 minutes, the birth contractions started and there were none but pregnant women. I started screaming out of pain, but none of the doctors or nurses came. The contractions became stronger and the pain increased. Due to persistent pushing and without any doctor’s help, I gave birth to a baby girl that I named Misk al-Khitam.
When the nurse arrived, she took my baby girl and put her beside me, leaving her without clothes for 15 minutes that her skin turned blue. She then came and put my baby in a neonatal incubator. After 45 minutes, a nurse came and cut the umbilical cord. I was directly discharged from the hospital due to the serious situation in the area. After I left, I was told that the ambulance driver who took me to the hospital was killed with 3 of his colleagues.
