“I couldn’t tell whether we were alive or dead and buried under the rubble”

A Palestinian journalist and mother recounts a night of terror as Israel kills more than 400 in Gaza

A woman sits on the ruins of a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp destroyed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza on March 18, 2025. (Photo by Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

GAZA CITY—I woke up at 3 a.m. on March 18th to the sound of a massive explosion above my head, shattering the silence of the night. For a moment, I felt like I had died.

I lifted my head from the pillow, still unaware of what was happening around me. The air was filled with grey dust.

Suddenly, the screams of my five children pierced my ears. I couldn’t tell whether we were alive or dead and buried under the rubble. I rushed to hold them.

More explosions followed—Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza relentlessly and without warning last night.

“Mama! Are we going to die?” my terrified 12-year-old daughter, Saida, asked me, her body trembling with fear.

I couldn’t answer. I was in shock. I looked for my husband, who had been sleeping beside me, but I couldn’t find him. Moments later, he emerged from the dust, holding pieces of cloth soaked in water. He told me and the children to cover our mouths and noses to protect ourselves from the suffocating dust.

I noticed the walls of the adjacent room had completely collapsed. That was the room we usually slept in, but by chance, my husband and I decided to sleep with our five children in a warmer room last night. I had no idea this trivial decision would save our lives.

I quickly threw on my abaya, grabbed my three-year-old daughter, Masak, in my arms, and my husband carried our five-year-old daughter, Hour. Our three other children—12-year-old Saida, 10-year-old Zein, and 8-year-old Sham—were close behind us as we ran out of the house, not knowing if we were escaping death or racing toward it.

Outside, we saw our neighbors’ house—the Jamasi family—reduced to a pile of rubble. It had taken a direct hit.

We stood in shock watching paramedics and civil defense teams pulling them out of the ruins. They retrieved 11 people from the house. Five of them were dead, including an eight-year-old girl named Siwar. She had been playing outside her house the day before. Now she was gone.

Eight-year-old Siwar was one of several members of the Jamasi family killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Gaza City on March 18, 2025. Photo courtesy of Jamasi family.

We fled the area, seeking shelter with relatives in a nearby neighborhood. We grabbed what little we could carry, but we left behind all sense of safety.

As we fled, my husband said, “When I heard our children screaming, I felt helpless. I only thought about getting them out alive, but I brought them out to what? To a life where we run from one death to another?”

We’re now cramped together in an overcrowded room. Even though we’re in a different neighborhood, fear follows us everywhere.

No one in Gaza feels safe. Israeli warplanes circle the skies nonstop, bombing civilian homes mercilessly, killing dozens without reason.

The airstrikes last night killed more than 400 Palestinians, including 174 children, 89 women, and 32 elderly people.

We’re still in shock. My eight-year-old daughter can no longer sleep.

I tried to comfort her, to help her sleep, but she kept waking up crying. She told me, “Mama, every time I close my eyes, I feel like another bomb is falling on us.”

I lay beside her to soothe her. This morning, I discovered she had wet herself in fear.

My 12-year-old, Saida, keeps asking me, “Mama, will the planes come back again?” I have no answer for her.

How can I reassure her when I no longer believe I will wake up tomorrow?

I looked into my husband’s weary, burdened eyes and asked him, “When will this nightmare end?” He replied, “We are alone in this world. No one cares.”

We’re trying to hold on to life, but life in Gaza is no longer what we once knew.

We survived this airstrike—but did we really survive this war?