GAZA, (PIC)
Sa’er Abu Daraz did not close his eyes all night. Grief hovered closer than sleep. In a single instant, he found his infant daughter, Suwar, not yet one year old, lying lifeless on the floor of their displacement tent. Beside her was the body of his wife, who had been killed in the same Israeli strike.
Within moments, an entire family was erased.
Just minutes earlier, they had been sheltering in a displacement camp in the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Yunis an area Israel had designated a “humanitarian safe zone.” It soon became the latest scene of deadly bombardment.
“The fire was consuming the tent while we were still inside”
Recounting the attack in a trembling voice, Sa’er said, “We woke up to an explosion that shook the entire tent. I opened my eyes and saw the fabric engulfed in flames. The smoke was suffocating us. I started calling for Suwar and her mother. When I pulled back the blanket, they were covered in blood.”
He continued, “I tried to put out the fire with my bare hands, but I couldn’t. I picked up my daughter and held her close. She was still warm, but her soul was already gone. Where is the safety they promised us? The fire consumed our tent and it consumed our lives.”
Silence at Nasser Hospital
At Nasser Medical Complex, Sa’er stood beside his daughter’s body.
He did not cry. Instead, he stared silently at her tiny face, torn by shrapnel from the strike, his hands resting on his head in stunned disbelief.
Only days earlier, Suwar’s family had celebrated her first birthday. War never gave her the chance to discover life. She learned the sound of explosions before she could utter her first word.
Beside her lay her mother, also killed in the attack, leaving her husband to confront a grief beyond the reach of language.
A “mock ceasefire”
The killings come amid what many Palestinians in Gaza describe as a “mock ceasefire.”
Since the ceasefire agreement took effect in October 2025, Israeli airstrikes have continued across multiple parts of the Gaza Strip despite the formal truce.
The strike on the family’s tent killed Suwar and her mother and wounded several other displaced civilians, marking yet another attack on displacement camps that had been designated as humanitarian shelters.
Figures illustrating the scale of the violations
According to statistics released by Gaza’s Government Media Office, as of 29 June 2026, Israeli forces had committed 3,465 violations of the ceasefire agreement.
The office says those violations resulted in the killing of 1,045 Palestinians, the injury of 3,380 others, and the detention of 113 Palestinians during the ceasefire period.
The same figures state that more than 2,200 Palestinian families have been completely wiped out since the beginning of the war in October 2023, while in more than 5,120 other families, only a single survivor remains.
Returning to an empty tent
After the funeral, Sa’er had nowhere to go except the same tent from which he had fled.
“I went back to the same tent I left, believing I would return with my wife and my daughter. I came back alone. The smell of blood and burned fabric is still there.”
In a matter of minutes, an entire family was extinguished. The father remains the lone witness to what he describes as a crime that “will never leave my memory as long as I live.”