Gaza City, Gaza Strip - Hayat Al-Ajlah moves slowly between hospital beds, leaning on a relative's arm, searching for her eight-year-old daughter, Dalia. She has not seen her daughter since they were pulled from the rubble of the Al-Saada building in western Gaza City on Wednesday.
Hayat, 37, says: "I woke up to check my phone. Suddenly, I heard a sound like something exploding. I felt something was falling from beneath us." Moments later, the building collapsed, claiming the lives of at least 21 Palestinians.
Search and Rescue Under the Rubble
Hayat was trapped under the rubble and could hear the cries of her family members calling for help. She said: "I could hear my 74-year-old father's voice calling for my 12-year-old son, Yasser. 'Yasser, Yasser,' he was shouting, and then his voice disappeared."
For nearly an hour, neighbors and civil defense forces tried to rescue Hayat and her children, but she knew others were trapped deep in the building. "The voices of my parents disappeared because they were in a part where the floors had collapsed on each other."
Previous Threats and Poor Conditions
Hayat said her family had been displaced from the Shuja'iyya neighborhood of Gaza to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza during a previous Israeli war and had returned to this building two months ago. She added: "My father's friend had told him that there was an empty apartment on the third floor. It was severely damaged, but we wanted to get out of the tent and escape those harsh conditions."
At Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, relatives of the victims are waiting and mourning. Umm Mahmoud Saada, the mother of one of the victims, said her son Mahmoud, 38, had just returned to Gaza City, and none of his family members survived.
The search operation has been prolonged due to a severe shortage of heavy machinery and essential equipment caused by Israeli restrictions on imports to Gaza and reconstruction. Palestinian civil defense forces said their teams have struggled for hours to reach those trapped under the rubble.
