‘Nowhere to go’: Gaza’s damaged buildings turn deadly

Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Leaning heavily on the arm of a relative, Hayat al-Ajlah moves slowly between the hospital beds, scanning the faces of the injured.

She is looking for her eight-year-old daughter, Dalia.

Hayat has not seen her since they were pulled from beneath the rubble of the al-Saada building in western Gaza City early on Wednesday, when the war-damaged structure collapsed over their heads.

“I woke up to check my phone,” the 37-year-old Hayat said. “Suddenly, I heard a sound like something cracking. It felt like something was falling from underneath us.”

Moments later, the building came down, killing at least 21 Palestinians.

Hayat found herself trapped beneath the rubble, surrounded by dust and darkness, with family members screaming for help.

“I heard my 74-year-old father calling for my 12-year-old son Yasser. ‘Yasser, Yasser,’ he was calling, and then his voice disappeared,” she said. “I panicked and started screaming for my four children.

‘We survived by a miracle’

For nearly an hour, neighbours and civil defence workers worked to pull Hayat, her children and some of the other residents from the rubble. But Hayat knew that others were trapped deeper inside the building.

“My father and mother’s voices disappeared because they were in the part where the floors collapsed on top of each other,” she said through tears. “We were closer to the side of the building that tilted, so we survived by a miracle.”

Nine members of Hayat’s extended family were killed, she said, including her parents, four of her siblings, and three of her nephews and nieces.

Her four children survived, although her daughter Dalia was taken to hospital with a serious head injury.

The collapse had come suddenly, but Hayat said there had been warning signs.

“My mother was afraid of the building, and my father was planning to find another place,” she said.

The family had been displaced from Gaza City’s Shujayea neighbourhood to Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, during an earlier phase of Israel’s genocidal war, before returning about two months ago.

With few alternatives, and many in Gaza still living in tents because of Israeli restrictions on reconstruction, the family moved into an empty apartment on the third floor of the damaged residential building after a friend of Hayat’s father told him it was available.

“My father’s friend told him there was an empty apartment on the third floor. It was severely damaged, but my family wanted to get out of the tent and escape its harsh conditions,” Hayat said.

Many members of her extended family were in the building when the tragedy struck because they had been preparing for a celebration – a family wedding planned for next week.

“We never expected this tragedy. The whole family is either dead or injured,” Hayat said.

Families wait at al-Shifa

At Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, relatives of the victims have gathered in grief and shock, waiting for the lengthy recovery operation to continue and for news of those still missing.

Among them was the Saada family.

Umm Mahmoud Saada, in her 70s, stood crying for her son Mahmoud, his wife and their children.

Mahmoud, 38, was the father of six girls and a boy. Neither Mahmoud nor his family survived.

He had been living displaced in southern Gaza and only returned to Gaza City a month ago, she explained.

“He had a tent in the middle of the street and was exhausted [living in it], and his financial situation was very difficult,” his mother said. “A relative showed him this place, so he settled there temporarily. We did not know it would be his end.”

She recalled seeing her son the day before.

“Yesterday, he visited me. We prayed the noon prayer together, ate together and then he left,” she said. “All our loved ones are leaving us, and our hearts are breaking day after day. Why is all this happening to us?”

Rescue with little equipment

The search operation has been prolonged by a severe shortage of heavy machinery and other essential equipment, a direct result of Israeli restrictions on imports into Gaza and reconstruction.

Palestinian Civil Defence said its teams had worked for hours to reach people trapped beneath the building, but had been forced to rely on limited and basic tools. The shortage made it difficult to clear the large amounts of concrete and rubble and reach those still underneath.

Mansour Bakroun, 56, had been sitting in front of his tent when the building collapsed before dawn.

“The building is around 150 metres [about 500 feet] away. At first, I ran back, calling for my family to flee,” he said.

Once the dust began to settle, he ran towards the building, where residents were already trying to rescue those trapped.

Mansour said the building had been visibly damaged since the beginning of the war.

“Every day, something would fall from it … a piece of a wall, a stone,” he said.

“People left, but those who stayed had nowhere to go,” he added. “They had no other place.”

Another man living nearby, Huzaifa Mohammed, said that he had long been afraid of a collapse.

“Every day, I imagine these buildings collapsing,” he said. “Every day, pieces of stone and walls are falling, and people ask: Where should we go?”

Huzaifa said the sight of children being pulled from the rubble had left him struggling to understand what he was witnessing.

“When I see a little girl brought out with her head crushed, I ask myself: What if this were my daughter or my son?” he said.

Huzaifa said people had spent years living among damaged buildings and warnings of danger, with few places to go.

“How long are we going to keep living like this?” he said. “Are we only going to come out and condemn what is happening? We need solutions. We need someone to look at our situation and ask: How much longer can this continue?”