Issued on 12 May 2025

My name is Rasmiya Tayseer Ali Al-Ajouri. I am 26 years old, a widow, and the mother of two daughters: Maria (2 years old) and Iman (1 year old). I live in Beit Lahia, near Abu Al-Jadyan roundabout.

Since the beginning of the war, I had been living with my husband in our apartment on the second floor in the Beit Lahia area, near Abu Ubaida Prison—a location that was classified as a “red zone” from the early days of the Israeli assault due to the intensity and frequency of the shelling.

On 10 October 2023, my husband’s brother, Abdul Latif Maher Al-Haw, was killed while riding his motorcycle in the Al-Salateen area, where he was directly targeted by the Israeli warplanes. Abdul Latif was a civilian with no affiliation to any political group and had been on his way to the family’s agricultural land.

The following day, we began receiving recorded calls from the Israeli military threatening forced evacuation. As a result, we were forced to leave our home and seek shelter at my father’s house near Abu Al-Jadyan roundabout, thinking it would be safer.

We remained there for nearly three weeks. During that period, the Israeli military was stationed in the Al-Salateen area. In the early hours of 18 November 2023, I was on the second floor of my father’s house. As the bombardment intensified, we decided to go downstairs and attempt to reach my grandfather’s nearby home. However, we were unable to leave due to the heavy shelling. We took refuge on the first floor of my uncle’s house—my father’s brother—who quickly took us in, especially since the shrapnel had already begun to reach us due to the proximity of the strikes in the Al-Tawba area.

About two to three hours later, Israeli warplanes carried out an intense attack “carpet bombing”, completely destroying dozens of homes within moments. I couldn’t comprehend the scale of the catastrophe. In that strike, I lost my sister Iman Tayseer Al-Ajouri (27 years old), my uncle Yasser Ali Al-Ajouri (47 years old), and my young daughter, Maria Mohammed Al-Haw (2 years old). I was also injured, along with my mother, Lubna Al-Ajouri (47), and my uncle’s wife, Luna Al-Ajjouri (43). At the time, I was four months pregnant.

At exactly 3:15 a.m., after a terrifying night of non-stop bombardment that began at 10 p.m. and continued into the morning hours, the sounds of explosions were horrifying—like living through the Day of Judgment. We couldn’t escape or find safer shelter; the shelling came from every direction. As the danger intensified, we moved to the first floor of the house, where my uncle let us in. The women sat together in one room, the men in another. Half the house was built with asbestos sheets, the other half with concrete.

The house next to us was bombed by the Israeli warplanes, artillery shells, and drones. Everything collapsed above our heads. Homes crumbled over their residents, and neighbours were trapped under the rubble, unable to move. We survived by a miracle, crawling out from among scattered corpses and torn body parts. While trying to escape the wreckage—injured and in shock—a concrete rod pierced my foot. I was holding my daughter Maria in my arms; she was martyred while I was carrying her. Her head was split open, and I could see her brain. I couldn’t grasp what had happened—it felt as if time had stopped.

I sustained injuries to my nose and back. At one point, I thought I had lost the baby I was carrying—I was four months pregnant. I didn’t know whether Maria had been hit by shrapnel or something else. All I saw was her small, lifeless body, limp in my arms. It was an indescribable scene. The place was engulfed in rubble, debris, dust, the cries of the wounded, and the groans of the dead.

We managed to reach my grandfather’s house, bleeding. Some of us went to Kamal Adwan Hospital, but I didn’t, despite my injuries. I arrived at my grandfather’s house still carrying Maria on my wounded foot, screaming, “Help my daughter! She’s still breathing!” My father rushed her to the hospital, then returned to tell me she had been martyred. I couldn’t take it in—all I could say was, “May God have mercy on her… Surely we belong to God, and to Him we shall return.”

At dawn, ambulances finally arrived and began transporting the wounded. But massacres had already taken place—entire families were wiped out, like the Al-Shamali family, which lost 16 members in a single strike. I later went to the hospital, where they told me the injury to my back was from a surface-level piece of shrapnel. They couldn’t stitch my nose because there were too many critical cases. The most severe injury was to my foot—I couldn’t move it for three months and had to rely on a wheelchair.

As for my mother, she was wounded in the head. She underwent surgery with 20 stitches, and the shrapnel was removed from her skull. There were around 50 people in that house when it was bombed. I remained in a state of shock for days, unable to process what was happening around me. A few days after the martyrdom of my daughter Maria, we received the news of my sister Iman’s death—followed by the disappearance of my father’s brother.

After two weeks of searching under the rubble, my sister Iman’s body was finally found. As for my uncle’s remains, they were not easily identifiable—his body had been torn to pieces, and with each search, a new part of him was discovered.

The day after the bombing, we decided to evacuate to Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital due to the danger of the area and fear of another strike. When my husband came to take me, I asked to see our daughter Maria one last time to say goodbye, but he told me he had already been forced to bury her. My baby girl was buried without me seeing her or saying a final farewell.

After that, my husband took me to his family’s home, but the shelling was everywhere. The Israeli occupation forces [IOF] were firing smoke and phosphorus bombs heavily.

After the ceasefire ended, we left for Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital at 7 a.m. There were about 83 people crammed into a room no larger than 6 by 6 metres—no privacy, no water, and no food. I was suffering badly: I was injured, pregnant, and sleeping with over eight people on only two mattresses. Most of the time, I slept sitting on the rough floor because there was simply no space. I felt completely alone. My family and my husband’s family had all evacuated to the south, and my husband couldn’t stay with me due to the lack of space, so he stayed with a relative near the hospital.

At the end of November 2023, we were informed of a military operation in Jabalia camp, so we evacuated to the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, staying at my husband’s sister’s house for two weeks. Later, as the military operations escalated in that area, we moved to Al-Shifa Hospital, which was considered the last remaining safe haven in Gaza. But that night was one of the hardest nights of my life. The hospital was overcrowded, and we couldn’t find any space inside. We searched nearby and found an abandoned house. Its owners eventually returned and asked us to leave, but we begged them to let us stay just one night because we were so exhausted. They agreed. Still, it was a terrifying night—we couldn’t sleep because of the intense shelling and the constant sound of artillery nearby, with drones hovering above us the whole time. At first light, we left and returned to my husband’s sister’s house in Al-Tuffah.

After the Israeli army withdrew from Jabalia camp, we returned to Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital and stayed there for about two to three months. I suffered from the lack of sanitation, absence of hygiene, and severe water shortages. Being pregnant, I needed frequent access to a bathroom, which made things even harder. When I entered my seventh month of pregnancy, my husband rented an apartment for us to move into, but I was afraid to be alone due to our past experience with the bombings. So we moved into a neighbour’s house with my father and husband. Although the shelling continued, it was less intense than before.

We barely had any food—only some children’s sweets, lollipops, dates, and nuts, which we ate just to calm the hunger. I had a bit of flour, which my husband and father left for me because I needed the nutrition, but even so, I didn’t eat more than one piece of bread every two days to make it last. I became malnourished and still suffer the effects—dizziness and bone pain.

When we heard there was flour available in the Kuwait and Nabulsi roundabouts, my husband would go to get some. I lived in constant fear every time he left, afraid he wouldn’t return. On one occasion, he went to Shuja’iyya to buy sugar and was shot in the arm by a drone. His condition was serious, and they warned that he might lose his arm, but he refused to undergo surgery.

On 24 April 2024, I gave birth to my daughter Iman after an easy delivery. Just two weeks later, we had to evacuate again to Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital due to the renewed military escalation in Jabalia camp. Given the danger, we moved the next day to Al-Tuffah, where we stayed for two weeks. My husband walked every day from Al-Tuffah to Beit Lahia because there was no transportation.

After the end of the military operation, we returned to our neighbour’s home in Beit Lahia and remained there until October 2024, when the IOF launched a new round of shelling and dropped leaflets demanding evacuation. My husband refused to leave, despite the restrictions on movement in western Gaza City and the placement of military checkpoints.

On 8 October 2024, around 11 a.m., my husband, my father, and my maternal uncles were sitting on the rubble of my family’s house, under a remaining piece of the roof. I was with my mother’s sister, preparing to light the oven to bake bread. Her sister asked my husband to light it, but then Israeli tanks began firing randomly into the area. My husband stepped out to check what was happening, and an Israeli drone missile struck them.

My husband, Mohammed Maher Al-Haw (29 years old), and my mother’s brother, Ahmad Zuhair Al-Ajouri, were killed. Her other brother, Abdel Razeq Zuhair Al-Ajouri, had his hand amputated, while his sons, Mohammed Fareed Al-Ajouri and his brother Yousef, were also injured—Mohammed lost his eyesight, and Yousef sustained a lighter injury. Two other people, whose identities I don’t know, were also killed.

We ran to hide under the stairs of the house. When the shelling calmed down slightly, a neighbour came to help us escape to Kamal Adwan Hospital, which we thought was safe. Before I left, my father came running and shouting, “They’re all dead!” I asked him about Mohammed, but he couldn’t answer me directly.

On the way, I stopped to search for my husband as shells fell around me. When I reached Abu al-Jadyan roundabout, I saw the martyrs wrapped in blankets. I was carrying my daughter, barely able to hold her. I felt deep inside that my husband had been killed. After passing the roundabout, my father signaled to me with his hands clasped together — a sign that Mohammad was gone.

At that moment, I was struck by a new trauma, while I had not yet recovered from the last. It hadn’t even been a year since I lost my daughter, and now I was losing my husband too. I broke down in tears, and some people rushed to hold me and take me to Kamal Adwan Hospital. I went to bid farewell to my husband. I sat next to his body, holding my daughter in my arms, sobbing, whispering prayers for strength — to endure the loss of both him and my little girl, Maria. I stayed in the hospital for three to four hours before we moved to Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital. But the IOF targeted the hospital with a missile, killing ten people. We had to return the next day to the house we had been staying in, in Beit Lahia.

That day was one of the harshest I’ve ever experienced. I was in such deep shock that I couldn’t even fully feel the pain of losing my husband and daughter.

From October 8, 2024, to November 5, I lived in a constant state of forced displacement, moving from one place to another under the sounds of shelling. I left Beit Lahia after the Israeli army detonated a robot — a booby-trapped tank — near the western roundabout. I walked a short distance, and the IOF’s tanks were right in front of me. People walked out carrying white flags. I carried my daughter and our bags, walking through streets filled with rubble, dust, and smoke from missiles. I made it from Beit Lahia to the Civil Administration checkpoint, where quadcopters hovered over our heads. I spent two hours at the checkpoint, surrounded by terrifying sounds of bombardment and exploding robots in northern Gaza.

I continued on foot to the Tuffah area and stayed there for two days, then walked south from Nablusi roundabout to Tabbat al-Nuweiri, carrying heavy loads, completely exhausted. On November 8, when I reached the checkpoint, the Israeli army held us for three hours under the sun. From the afternoon until sunset, I walked from the checkpoint to Tabbat al-Nuweiri, where I found my sister’s husband and my husband’s brothers waiting for me. My mother didn’t even know I had arrived after being apart for a year and a half. I moved to the south — to Deir al-Balah — where I stayed with my mother and daughter in a tent at the end of Al-Baraka Street inside the camp.

When the truce began, I temporarily returned with my family to my mother’s house. Later, we pitched a tent over the rubble of my family’s home and stayed there. When it rained, the water would pour in; our tent protected us neither from the cold nor from the rain.

The day before Eid, our tent burned down — with everything inside it: photos of my husband and my daughter Maria, the last memories I had of them. Everything was gone — the furniture, the blankets, the mattresses — all destroyed because a matchstick fell from my nephew’s hand while he was playing. The fire spread rapidly, and we had no water to extinguish it. The fabric and sponge of the tent fed the flames. We managed to get the children out and escape, but nothing remained.

With the return of war, it felt like my soul had left my body. The fear of being forcibly displaced again haunts me. All I wish for is for this war to end. I’m exhausted… exhausted from wearing my prayer gown every day for months, hoping one day I can take it off — when the shelling stops, and life returns.