- Written by Orla Guerin
- Senior International Correspondent, Jerusalem
Video recorded by a Palestinian rescue worker shows screams coming from beneath a pile of crushed concrete.
“First of all, please don't help me. Please help my father and mother. And please help my brother Tarazan. He is an 18-month old baby.”
On the morning of December 2, 2023, 12-year-old Alma Jalloul was buried under the rubble of a five-story building in downtown Gaza City for more than three hours.
“I want to see my brothers and sisters,” she cries. “It was nostalgic.”
But rescuers reached Alma first, and she managed to climb out on her own between jagged concrete slabs and twisted metal bars.
Although he was covered in dust, there were no major injuries.
They ask where her family is. She pointed to the rubble on either side of her.
Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find disturbing
Three months later, Alma told the BBC about her experience in great detail.
Her uncle Sami is sitting nearby. She has taken refuge with him and his family in a tent in Rafah, southern Gaza.
Her words are a torrent of fear and loss.
“I remember waking up under the rubble. I checked my iPad and it was 09:00. I was hoping my brother Tarazan was still alive. I called out to him. , I kept hoping that one of them would survive.''
“I could smell blood. Blood was dripping on me. I was screaming for someone to help me. I could hear other people screaming as well.”
However, after Alma was rescued, she saw Tarazan's body.
“I lifted the blanket that was covering him. I found him in an unimaginable condition.'' “His head had been severed,'' she says. Here she was silent, haunted by the invisible.
“Seeing my brother like that made me want to die,” she says. “He was only 18 months old. What did he do in this war?”
Tarazan wasn't her only loss. Her entire family disappeared, her parents Mohamed (35) and Naeema (38) killed side by side. Brothers Ghanem (14 years old) and Kinan (6 years old). and her younger sister Rehab, 11 years old.
Alma's parents were fleeing Israeli artillery fire and trying desperately to keep their children safe. She said the first area her family fled to was bombed, and the second area was bombed. And third, a bomb landed on them.
Relatives said the building where they were sleeping was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military told us that it could not comment on this claim without the coordinates of the building.
“We were happy together as a family,” says Alma. “We often hugged each other when we were scared. I wish I could have hugged everyone, but we didn't have enough time together.”
And she is still waiting to bury them. Only Tarazan's body was recovered.
“There were 140 refugees. [Gazans displaced by the war] “Only part of the body was found inside the building,” she said.
“The bodies of my family members are rotting under the rubble. I desperately want to see them and give them a proper burial.”
Sometimes Alma is able to forget everything she has lost just for a moment.
She sits on the cold floor of a tent with her young cousins. They make kites using scraps of plastic and their imagination. Alma joins in, chatting and smiling.
She says she no longer cries all the time because she knows her parents are “happy in heaven.”
She feels safe with her uncle Sami's family, but she is not safe.
Like all children in Gaza, she could be killed at any moment. Particularly vulnerable are the people of Rafah, where Israel continues to threaten ground attacks. There are 1.4 million Palestinians living there.
The war in Gaza was sparked by an October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians.
Since then, children in Gaza have paid a terrible price.
The United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, said 13,000 children have been killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip since the war began, calling the killing rate “staggering.”
Health ministry officials in Hamas-controlled areas say the total death toll from the war is at least 31,923. The World Health Organization considers the numbers “reliable” and says the actual number could be higher.
Israel says it is doing everything in its power to minimize civilian casualties.
Palestinians counter that many bombs were dropped on homes occupied by displaced people, killing families like Alma's.
Her relatives shared the photos with us. It depicts Alma smiling broadly, surrounded by a group of six young cousins. Everyone is already dead except for her. They were killed along with her next of kin in the December 2 attack.
And how many Almas are now deprived of their mothers and fathers?
As of the end of February, the war had left at least 20,000 orphans, according to preliminary information gathered by researchers at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. It is an independent non-governmental organization working on the ground in Gaza with support from the EU.
The center said the actual number could be higher, but it could not be confirmed due to the difficulty and danger of accessing information in Gaza.
On the dirt patch between the rows of tents, Alma plays hopscotch with her uncle Sami's children, jumping from square to square. She looks happy and relaxed. It's also a moment to forget.
Before the war took everything away, she loved to sing and wanted to become a doctor, as her father had hoped.
“I had a dream that I wanted to achieve,” says Alma. “But now I don't have any more dreams. I feel pain in my heart and it will stay with me forever, because they were my family, my parents,” my sister and brother. And in one night they were all gone. ”
All Alma wants to do is escape from Gaza and contact her grandmother, who lives abroad.
“I just want to go to her and hug her and feel safe,” she says.
Additional reporting by Wietske Burema, Goktay Koraltan and Haneen Abdeen