GAZA, (PIC)
Little Dima fell asleep in the embrace of her mother on New Year’s Eve. Due to her health condition and the brain atrophy she has had since birth; she has never been separated from her mother. Moments before the new year 2024 entered, Israeli airstrikes targeted the home of Dima Mohammed Abu Al-Ata with three missiles, planting death and destruction in the house located in Deir al-Balah camp in central Gaza Strip.
Four-year-old Dima was instantly killed along with her 24-year-old mother Heba, while her father Mohammed sustained various injuries and her two-year-old brother Bahaa suffered moderate injuries. From his hospital bed at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah on the night of the bloody death, her wounded father, Mohammed Abu Al-Ata, describes the incident and tells the PIC correspondent, “I was about to fall asleep with my family when suddenly the house collapsed on top of us.”
He continues, “The roof of the house fell on my body, and half of my body was suspended in the air. I miraculously survived.” He confirms that he started screaming for help and informing those who came to the rescue about his young children.
An eyewitness adds that he found two-year-old Bahaa lying on the ground, having fallen from the family’s house on the first floor, and he was transported to the hospital.
Mohammed said, “What did my daughter Dima, who has special needs and cannot sleep or do anything without the assistance of her mother, do wrong?” He wonders, “By what sin did they deprive my two-year-old son Bahaa of his mother?”
Bahaa cries all the time, asking about his mother and his sister Dima, but those around him are helpless and cannot answer. There are no answers in this bitter present, immersed in blood, loss, and deprivation.
Since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on October 7 on the Gaza Strip, 21,978 civilians have been martyred, and the number of injured has reached 57,697, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Health. Seventy percent of the victims are women and children.
