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Gazi Sharaf's voice trembles as he recalls the fateful night in May that tore his family apart. He is one of only three of his 14 family members who survived an Israeli strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
For about six hours, Gazi was buried under rubble, where thousands of people remain, their whereabouts unknown with rescue teams unable to save them. Such incidents remain common across Gaza where ambulances and civil defence vehicles have been damaged, destroyed or prevented from accessing areas where they are needed the most.
Gazi's father, siblings and extended family were all crushed under the debris. “The hardest part was calling out to them while I was trapped. No one responded. I found myself wishing I wasn’t alive, just to escape those moments of not knowing.”
In the absence of materials to help teams dig through the rubble, rescue workers often have to resort to using their hands to search for victims. When he was brought to safety, Gazi immediately asked about the rest of his family. “No one would tell me. They were afraid of my reaction because they knew most of them were gone.”
Months later, the trauma lingers. “Every time I lie down to sleep, I’m back there, under the rubble. I see it all again – the chaos, the dust, the silence of those who didn’t answer me. It feels like I’m still trapped.”
Anas Sultan remembers the terror he felt when an Israeli attack on his family home destroyed the building in which he lived with his parents, three sisters and two brothers.
“The strike hit so suddenly,” he told The National. “I blacked out for a moment and when I came to, I realised the house was gone. We were buried in rubble.”
It was a surreal moment, he said. “Your life flashes before your eyes. You remember everything and fear consumes you – not for yourself but for the people you love. I was terrified for my family but I couldn’t reach them.”
Anas began calling out to members of his family. Some responded but others did not. “The air was thick with dust and gunpowder, and the debris was too heavy.”
Rescue teams eventually arrived and found all but his sister Rana and brother Mahmoud. “They had been on the balcony when the missile struck,” Anas said. “The rescuers searched the surrounding area and found them later. They had been propelled from the house and were martyred.
“I kept thinking, 'I wish we had all died together. I don’t want this life where I’ve lost the dearest people to my heart.'”
Huda Abu Nasser's survival came at an unbearable cost. On October 29, her house in Beit Lahia was bombed, killing more than 130 members of her extended family.
“I was sitting with my two children in a room when everything collapsed,” she told The National. “I screamed for my children and they answered. But we were buried under the rubble, unable to move.”
Through the debris, Huda kept talking to her children, urging them to stay calm. “I couldn’t physically reach them. All I could do was cry and call out for help.”
Being trapped felt like the brink of death, she said. “You don’t think about yourself in those moments. All I cared about was saving my children.”
Rescuers arrived at dawn, hours later, and it took three more hours to free them from the rubble. "I kept shouting: 'Get my children out. Save them.'" Huda was pulled out first and then her children, injured but alive.
“The moments I spent waiting for the rescue team to save the other members of my family felt like decades," she told The National. "It was an overwhelming mix of emotions – fear of losing someone, hope for their survival, dread that they might not be found and then the terror that, if found, they might already be gone. It’s something that can’t truly be described. I lost over 130 relatives. Some were buried, others remain under the rubble.”
For Gazi, Anas and Huda, survival is not the end of their stories but the beginning of a lifetime of grief and recovery. Beneath the rubble, they faced death and emerged alive – but not unscathed. “Life under the rubble is a place no one should experience,” Huda said. “It’s where you feel life slipping away but you fight to hold on, for yourself, for your family, for a chance to live again."
