Family count cost of strike that killed teenage sisters
Mohammad Saed has been left with only memories of his fiancee after she and her sister were killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza city.
Instead of starting a new life with Dania Adas, 19, he is attending her funeral.
Mr Saed, 22, was inconsolable as he scrolled through pictures of happier times on his phone.
Ms Adas lay next to her sister Eman, 17, wrapped in a white shroud after they were killed last week.
The target of the strike was the house next door, which Israel’s military believed was sheltering high-level members of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While the strike killed three militants, it also killed at least 10 civilians – among them the Adas sisters.
“We were preparing for our wedding, making the last touches to our home,” Mr Saed told The National.
The couple had hopes for a better future, not only for themselves but for Gaza. They had even chosen a name for their hoped-for firstborn son – Samah.
Videos shared on social media show Mr Saed reading the Quran beside his fiancee’s body.
Ms Adas, a university student, was asleep in her room, surrounded by wedding gifts and new clothes, when the Israeli strike occurred. “The heavy sound of bombing woke me up to find dust everywhere, so I ran immediately to my daughters’ room calling them, but unfortunately didn’t get any reply,” said Alaa Adas, Dania and Eman’s father.
“I started to dig in the rubble, looking for my daughters. First, I found Dania.
“I tried to wake her up, but she didn’t respond.”
Eman was alive when she was found and taken to hospital, where she died.
“This is a crime. We were supposed to go to the market to buy her the marriage gift, but when she found that the price of the gold was high, she told me to wait,” Mr Adas said.
Several families have lost loved ones in the latest violence in the enclave. Rocket fire between Israel and militant groups have killed at least 26 Palestinians, among them children, and one Israeli.
Militants in Gaza have fired hundreds of rockets at Israel since Wednesday, the Israeli military said.
Many of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system.
The Israeli military said it fired at targets across Gaza.
Before a ceasefire mediated by Egypt began on Saturday, shops in Gaza were closed and the streets empty as Israeli military aircraft circled.
The ceasefire was too late for the Adas sisters. “Just imagine that suddenly you lose the love of your life – how you would feel,” Mr Saed said.