CROSSFIREARABIA – Ahmed Nahed Azzam had no idea that going to buy some grapes for his family to help them through the famine of summer 2025 would save his life. He didn’t then realize it would make him also, a witness to a horrific massacre that claimed the lives of 21 members of his family, including his elderly 65-year-old father and most of his children.
The 31-year-old Azzam recounted to Quds Press what happened on the tragic Monday day of 14 July, 2025, when famine and starvation had been ravaging northern Gaza for the best part of two years.
“I was sitting with my father, my seven-month pregnant wife, my son Karim, my brother’s wife Shahd, and her children, Osama and Rateb, in the garden of our house in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City. It was the height of the famine. I decided to buy a kilogram of grapes and quickly left to get on my bicycle before the vendor leaves,” he recounted.
“As soon as I arrived at the grape vendor and was buying, I heard a huge explosion that shook the area. I had a terrible foreboding and sensed then my house must have been targeted, so I rushed back quickly,” he added.
“I arrived at the house to find it was up in smoke from the missile that landed on it, the smell of death and gunpowder was distinct, filling the air, a profound silence enveloped the place,” he sighed.
It was a four-story house, that sheltered about 50 people, “it had been completely leveled, burying nearly all my family members inside,” he said in a reverie, as if still fathomining what had happened.
He was overcome with grief and shock. The house had been reduced to rubble. At first, he felt completely paralyzed, unable to move his limbs. He began calling out for his father, his wife, his son Karim, and his brothers, but he received no answer, his voice hollow and echoing.
After a while Azzam gazed around and saw pieces of torn flesh, his family members scattered around the destroyed building. “Some had been thrown a considerable distance by the force of the blast,” he added, recounting neighbors soon rushed to the scene and were everywhere, retrieving the bodies of the martyrs and the wounded, one by one.
He confirmed most of the people in the house were killed, becoming martyrs in an instant. “They were soon pulled out from under the rubble and taken to the nearby Al-Quds Hospital, except for my cousin Alaa, who remained buried under layers of concrete because the building came tumbling down.
“My nine-year-old niece Judy was also pulled from the rubble but she was in a critical condition. She suffered fractures in both arms and legs, a fractured skull and forehead, damage to her left eye, and burns across much of her body.
“Initially the doctors thought Judy would soon die due to the severity of her injuries, fractures, and burns, especially on her head and eye, but she survived after being in a coma for two days,” he said.
Azzam explained Judy was the only surviving member of her family after her father, mother, and siblings were killed, and when she learned of this she was devastated.
Ten days ago, he finally arrived in Egypt, after the Israeli authorities granted him permission to leave so that Judy could be treated there since the medical system in Gaza was in complete collapse. “I hope Judy can recover here,” he continued.
Her injuries have left her with no sense of smell, her left eye is blinded and requires reconstructive surgery due to the extensive burns covering her body.
“I hardly believed that I am still alive,” Judy simply said. It is still the beginning of the road to recovery. She is in shock and still can’t get to terms with the fact that her father, mother, brothers, grandfather, uncles, aunts, and their children have gone forever.
“After my treatment in Egypt I hope to recover to return to Gaza to continue my school and help in my uncle Ahmed’s kindergarten,” she concludes as if in a determined fate.
This article written by Dr Marwan Asmar is republished her from the Hackwriters.com website
CrossFireArabia
