Since missiles began pounding close to her family’s home on the Gaza Strip this week, Najwa Sheik-Ahmad has been top scared to sleep.
“The nights are so scary for us – for our children,” said the mother of five. “In any moment your home might be your grave.”
Najwa says all day, she can hear the roar of Israel fighter jets flying overheard, along with the sound of explosions of missiles and aerial bombardments. “Everything is shaking around us,” she said. “And we are shaking too because we are so afraid.”
She is one of many residents in Israel and Gaza who have been gripped by fear, as Palestinian militants and Israel Arab mobs have erupted in many Israeli towns. At least 83 people have now been killed in Gaza and seven in Israel.
Najwa’s family has sheltered together in the middle of their first-floor home, as hundreds of Israeli missiles hit Gaza on Wednesday night.
Families live in fear that the next bomb might hit their home anytime.
“You might in any second be in a bombardment around you, targeting your house or targeting your neighbourhood,” she says. “This may change the place where you are supposed to be safe into a grave for you and your children, for your dreams, for your memories, for everything.”
Israel says dozens of those killed in Gaza were militants, and that some of the deaths are from misfired rockets from Gaza.
