Testimony Date: 20 June 2025

Noor Basheer Mohammed Al-Dallou, a 17-years-old student, resident of Al-Shuja’iyya.

I live with my family in a rented asbestos-roofed house in the Al-Shuja’iyya neighbourhood. When the war began on 7 October 2023, we were forced to flee almost immediately. The house offered no protection from the bombing, and staying there amid the indiscriminate bombing was too dangerous.

Our forced displacement journey from Al-Shuja’iyya was grueling—a journey through death and homelessness, from one massacre to another. Eventually, we settled at my brother Hamed’s house, where we stayed for nearly five months, trying to survive the brutal reality of war and displacement. But at 3:30 a.m. on 16 May 2024, the walls that once sheltered us turned into a shroud.

An Israeli warplane fired a missile that directly hit the house—a two-storey building. Ten women, including myself, were on the first floor, while seven men were on the second. The missile pierced the upper floor and exploded in the lower floor where we were gathered. In a single instant, everything disappeared. My mother, my sister Ilham, and my niece were all killed.

As for me, I was later told that the force of the explosion hurled me ten metres away, all the way to the end of the street. My body was no longer whole—both of my legs were severed. Parts of me lay scattered. I was completely unconscious, slipping into a coma that lasted for ten days after being taken to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

When people pulled me from the rubble, they placed me in an ambulance, unaware that I was still alive. I felt nothing. I didn’t know my legs had been amputated. I didn’t hear the screams around me. At the hospital, I lay on the floor for a full hour among the wounded and the dead—no bed, no space amid the chaos and blood. After that hour, doctors rushed me into surgery to remove the remaining damaged parts of my legs, which were burned and shredded by shrapnel. I was on the brink of death, unconscious as they pumped 15 units of blood into me during a two-hour operation.

When I finally began to regain consciousness, I was hit with the first shock: Where are my legs? Where is the rest of me? I looked at my body but didn’t recognize it. It didn’t feel like mine. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t cry the way I needed to—the pain was too deep for words. But the deepest wound was the loss. I never got to say goodbye to my mother, never saw my sister or the other martyrs in my family one last time.

I stayed at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital for more than a month. I had to endure daily dressing changes on wounds that refused to heal. In the beginning, they used anaesthesia because the pain was unbearable, but eventually everything ran out—medications, painkillers, even anaesthesia. There was no other choice. They began changing my dressings while I was fully awake. The pain was like dying over and over again. My body trembled, my breathing stopped, and I felt like I was about to pass out.

Before the injury, I lived a normal life. I walked, moved, and did everything independently. Now suddenly, I was helpless. I needed someone to take me to the bathroom, to help me with even the smallest movements. I see girls my age living their lives, moving freely, and I’m stuck in a wheelchair, dependent on others. My thoughts are suffocating: What was I before, and what have I become? What if this had never happened? What if I were living a normal life like everyone else?

Since the injury, I’ve lost the ability to move freely. If we are bombed again, I will be trapped amid the rubble—unable to flee, with no shelter to protect me from the fire. I no longer have a home. I’m displaced, in a strange place, with no privacy, no safety, living in constant anxiety about being forced to flee again—this time to an overcrowded school or a flimsy tent. I don’t know how I’ll survive that.

But it didn’t stop there. I was also deprived of continuing my education. No books, no phone, no internet—no way to learn or hope. The Israeli occupation didn’t just amputate my legs, destroy my home, and kill my family—it also stole my future. How many things have I lost? Even the simplest joys—like playing football, which I used to love—are no longer part of my life. As a complication from my injury, I developed blood clots in my lungs. I now suffer from shortness of breath and sometimes lose consciousness. I have constant headaches and needed blood thinners, but the medication isn’t available in hospitals or pharmacies. My condition keeps deteriorating. I feel constantly suffocated. I’m waiting for someone to help me secure treatment—waiting for the chance to live a life that even slightly resembles the one I had before the Israeli missiles struck.

The days feel endlessly heavy with thoughts. How did the Israeli occupation deprive me of living like a normal human being? How did it turn me into a person with a disability in an instant? It’s a feeling beyond description—agonizing for a girl my age to be stripped of her legs, her freedom, and the life she once knew. I still need a wheelchair to move around. But despite the pain and the suffering, I hold on to hope—that one day I’ll receive a prosthetic leg, and that, despite the disability, I’ll achieve part of the dreams I once had. That I’ll live like my friends and finish my education. I began physiotherapy in late September 2024, but I’m still waiting to travel for treatment abroad. I’m still waiting for a chance to survive.