Dr. Eyad Al Sarraj writing in the Guardian:
on top of your head. The windows were shaking and squeaking. My
10-year-old was terrified, he was jumping from one place to another
trying to hide. I held him tight to my chest and tried to give him some
security and reassure him. My 12-year-old was panicking and began
laughing hysterically, it's not normal. I held her hand and calmed her
and told her she would be safe. My wife was panicking. She was running
around the apartment looking for somewhere to hide.
We live on the ground floor so we headed to the basement.
Not
very far from our home is the headquarters of the police and there was
a massive bomb. The chief of police was killed. Two streets away there
was another bomb and more people were killed. The office of the
president is about one kilometre from our house and it was also bombed.
We
went downstairs to the basement and tried to hide ourselves from the
shelling. The child of one of our relatives, who lives in our building,
finally came home from school. We hadn't been able to find her. All the
phone connections were jammed. She came home and she was in a very
serious state of shock. She was pale and trembling and she was
describing dead bodies in the streets. On her way home she passed Hamas
people in uniform and they were dead.
I had been very
apprehensive when I woke up this morning. I had some bread, some cheese
and a glass of tea. Like all the people in Gaza I felt that something
was going on and something very serious. When Israel allowed the
delivery of food and fuel [when it ended the blockade of Gaza
yesterday] I said to myself and my friends that Israel is really
planning a massive strike. They don't want to be blamed for starving
the people.
I was sitting in the living room with my family
trying to figure out what to do today for lunch, it's our main meal.
What to cook and how to cook, whether we have enough to eat. There was
no rice so I wanted to have lentil soup and my wife said "No, there's
no lentils in the market." I said "What else can we do?" She said "I
bought some cans of food." We were discussing this when suddenly the
whole thing erupted. Suddenly there was a big explosion.
Right now I feel very anxious about what's going to happen. I'm worried about how many more people are going to die.
