By Mohammad Dahman, Published in Arabic On WAFA: On the morning of Eid al-Adha Muslim feast, June 6, photojournalist Abdel Rahim Khader left his home in Jabalia, northern Gaza, to cover ongoing Israeli bombing. Just two hours later, he received a call that would upend his life: an Israeli airstrike had flattened the residential building where 38 of his relatives were sheltering.
“When I got there, my home was gone,” Khader told WAFA. “Only a crater remained. No walls, no voices, just silence and dust.”
The multistory house had been a haven for his extended family and displaced neighbors. That morning, it became a burial site.
“My parents, siblings, uncles, their spouses and children, an entire family erased,” he said. “Just moments before, I was photographing life. Now I’ve become part of the story.”
Inside the home, preparations for the holiday had been underway: children laughing, women cooking, relatives gathered in defiance of fear and hunger. But the strike left nothing recognizable behind.
Rescue workers and locals managed to retrieve five bodies and fragments of two more. Many others remain entombed beneath the rubble, inaccessible due to limited equipment and restricted access.
“The house is in a declared evacuation zone,” Khader said, “No rescue teams can reach it. Every day I stand at the edge of the neighborhood, waiting. There’s only wind, debris, and frozen memories.”
“Sometimes I think I hear someone calling, maybe a child asking for water. I wake up panicked, scroll through old photos and messages, looking for something that isn’t there anymore.”
Khader believes others may have been inside the house during the latest wave of displacement, people whose names don’t appear on casualty lists simply because no one knew they were there.
Among the slain Palestinian was his cousin, Ramzi Khader, a senior official with the UN Development Programme, along with Ramzi’s wife and six of their children; only one son survived.
UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner mourned their loss, describing Ramzi as a committed humanitarian.
“UN personnel and civilians in Gaza must never be targets,” Steiner said. “Protecting aid workers and noncombatants is not optional, it’s a humanitarian obligation.”
He called for an immediate ceasefire. “No family should endure what Ramzi’s has endured, or what countless others in Gaza are experiencing each day.”
According to Palestinian medical sources, by mid-May, Israeli attacks had destroyed more than 2,200 families and left over 5,100 with only a single surviving member.
On Thursday, Day 87 since the resumption of the genocide, Israeli missiles, shells, and live fire killed and injured dozens of Palestinians, including children and women, across the devastated, starved and besieged Gaza Strip.
Medical sources in Gaza said the Israeli army has killed at least 42 Palestinians, and injured dozens, since dawn, Thursday, including 24 slain Palestinians who were awaiting humanitarian aid.
Since the resumption of the genocide after Israeli violated the ceasefire agreement on March 18, 2025, the Israeli army has killed at least 3,411, including 944 children, 132 women, 148 elderly, and 26 journalists, and injured more than 14,879, including many children, women, elderly, medical staff, and journalists.
Since the beginning of this year, and despite cease fire that ended on March 18, Israel has killed at least 4,701 Palestinians, including 1,265 children and 322 women, and injured at least 14,879, mostly children, women, and elderly.
Israel has now killed at least 54,981 Palestinians, including more than 16,507 children, 9,803 women, 4,036 elderly, 254 journalists, 1411 medical staff, 203 UNRWA workers, 113 Civil Defense, and injured at least 126,615, largely children women and elderly, in addition to about 11,160 who remain missing, largely under the rubble of bombarded homes, buildings and alleys, across the destroyed Gaza Strip.
