Above: Samiha cradles a portrait of a murdered family member, as images of her murdered daughter and her daughter's husband rest on empty chairs in her home. Photograph by Philip Reynaers.

On Thursday, there was shelling when the Israelis came, then it got worse so we went down into the shelter. (...) We learned on Friday that there had been a massacre. I went to my neighbours’ house. I saw our neighbour Mustapha Al Habarat; he was injured and lying in a bath of his own blood. His wife and children were dead. We took him to the Gaza hospital and then we fled. When things had calmed down, I came back and searched for my daughter and my husband for four days. I spent four days looking for them through all the dead bodies. I found Zeinab dead, her face burnt. Her husband had been cut in two and had no head. I took them and buried them.

Mrs. Abbas Hijazi lost her daughter, her son-in-law, her daughter’s godmother and other loved ones.

Above: Mouna Hussein. Photograph by Philip Reynaers.

I was in my house in Horch, I was 4 months pregnant and I had an 8-month-old son. We lived peacefully. We heard the Israeli aeroplanes flying intensively overhead, their noise got louder and then the shooting started. I took my son and I said to my husband, “I want to go to my parents’ house in the Western quarter.” We went, and while we were there, the shooting increased. We stayed with neighbours who had a ground floor 2-storey house. When the shelling got worse, we stayed inside. It was six o’clock. We closed the door and stayed inside. There were only women and children there, except for my husband and a young man. We heard people shouting outside, and the armed men saying, “don’t shoot, use the axe. If they hear shooting they will escape.’’ A bomb exploded near the house, and everyone started screaming. They heard us, and started shooting at us. We shouted even louder and a young man was killed in front of us as he was trying to put the candle out. They carried on shooting, and when they heard us they threw a bomb at us. A woman was injured, as was my mother. The bedroom became a river of blood. The soldiers started shouting at us, “Come out! If you don’t come out we will dynamite the house!” They insulted us. My mother opened the door, saying that she wanted to sacrifice herself. She saw ten armed men. She said to one of them, “Don’t kill us.” He replied, “Everyone out, get in a line.” One after the other we went out. I stayed with my husband and with my other son, and then we went out. They said to my husband, “Come here, you.” My husband was carrying our son, so he gave him to me. The armed man said to him, “Get back.” My husband thought he wanted his ID card. As he was backing away, they machine-gunned him down in front of me. He didn’t say a word; he fell. I waited for my turn. They insulted me. I followed my mother and my sister to the orphanage, and we fled. The children lived alone, their father didn’t have any brothers or close relatives. They had no one at their side. Other orphans will find an uncle, but my children have only me. God help us. My son, even at his age, really needs a father to help him, someone he can talk to about his problems. When you’re an only child, what a huge empty space that leaves.

Above: Amal with her son. Photograph by Philip Reynaers.

On Wednesday, Israeli aeroplanes started flying over the area and the shooting and shelling began. My brothers and sisters were scared. Those who were scared went down into the shelter next to our house. Thus, one group slept in the shelter and the other group slept in the house. The aeroplanes continued hovering, and there were more and more of them. My three-month-old nephew, who was with my sister in the shelter, started crying. He wanted to eat. She came out with him and four others, and they all came into the house. As soon as she came in – this was on Thursday – we heard shouting, it was coming from the children and women in the shelter, which we could see from our bathroom window. All of a sudden, the armed Phalangists invaded the area. No one could leave the house. All we could hear was the screaming of babies and women. They started killing people. We stayed in the house; we opened the doors and then went into the bathroom with my little nephew. We had gagged his mouth for fear that they would hear his voice and come to kill us. We stayed in the bathroom; they came in and searched the house, but they didn’t find us. We heard the screams and the massacre through the bathroom window. That’s how we knew that they had gone into the shelter and taken everyone they found there, including my relatives. On the Saturday, we escaped into the inside of the camp. After that, my mother went back to see my brothers and sisters, but she couldn’t recognise them because they were so disfigured. All we knew was that they had been buried in the mass grave. My father taught the child who survived (my father’s nephew) to call him Daddy.

Above: Mohammed Abu Roudeina displays a paper from the International Committee of the Red Cross, identifying him as a survivor of the massacres. Photograph by Philip Reynaers.

I was at home with my father, my mother, and my sister. When the shelling started, we were at the home of my father’s uncle. There, the shelling started again, and we went into the bedroom, the men staying in the living room. Then we went to a neighbour’s house. There were about 25 or more of us. A little while later, we heard the cries of a girl who had been injured in the back. Armed men had stationed themselves in the area. Then we heard shooting, screams and strange voices. Aida, my cousin, went up to the shop and turned on the light. A man slit her throat and they dragged her by her hair. She started screaming “Daddy!” then her voice went dead. Her father went to follow her. They killed him immediately. That’s how they realised that we were in the house. They came down to the floor above us, where they broke and ransacked everything and we heard them calling out to each other, “George, Tony...” When we heard them breaking everything our voices rose, and that’s how they knew that we were on the floor below. One of them came down and saw us. He immediately told the others, and they all came down. My father was sitting on a chair, and as soon as he saw them, he kissed me, put some cologne on me and told my mother to take good care of the children. My father’s cousin said to his wife, “the children are your responsibility.”

I will never forget. The image of that day is engraved in my memory. They ordered the men to stand against the wall. They made us go out behind them into the road. When I got to the door, I looked up at the red sky, red streaked with flare grenades. Once we arrived at the beginning of the road, we heard the shots fired at my father and my uncle, as well as some shouting. We walked several metres, flanked by armed men. My cousin saw her father and she started screaming. I saw my father’s car, which they had opened and were sitting in. That image is also engraved in my memory, because I asked my mother what they were doing with my father’s car but she didn’t reply. As we walked along we saw the dead people.

They took us to the Sports Centre, and they placed us there in a room where there was a woman and her children. They brought people there. They took some of them away in cars and killed the others. At that moment, the Israeli tanks were there. Suddenly a mine that had been there since the beginning of the Israeli invasion exploded. They ran away, and so did we.

Mr Abu Roudeina lost his father, his (pregnant) sister, his brother-in-law and three other members of his family.

Above: Ali Fayad. Photograph by Philip Reynaers.

We were in the house and we had some people there. There was a car across the way and we went to move it. As we were coming back that Thursday, there were some armed men in front of the house. They ordered the separation of the men from the women and children. They lined up the men as well as our Palestinian neighbour and his family, against the wall and they shot them. The women and children were slaughtered in the road. Before shooting, they asked for their identity cards and they kept those. The Phalangists searched the house and the Israelis protected them with their tanks and their flares. When they shot us I was hit in the back, the thigh and the hand. The night was lit up by the flares. I remained laid out on the ground. Later I called out to someone who was passing and asked him to call an ambulance. A short while later my daughter came and took me to Akka hospital. The next day the Phalangists came to the hospital and asked my son, who was in the room next door, about me. They took away some of the injured Palestinians. I saw them dragging a wounded man out of his bed and hitting him on the head with an axe. He was young, and they killed him.

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