Gaza family mourns 19-year-old killed at Israeli aid site

DW (English)

After repeated displacement, the Qassem family lost their 19-year-old son Khader, who was shot dead while collecting aid at an IDF-approved distribution site. This report includes distressing family accounts. Independent verification is not possible due to Israeli restrictions on media access to Gaza.

Transcript

00:00He raised the bag as if surrendering. He was shot in the arm. It was torn off.

00:04Another bullet hit his arm here. It was also severed.

00:07He was shot in the stomach, then in the back of the neck.

00:10Five bullets from within a tank, each one tearing a wound like this.

00:14A 19-year-old boy who hadn't even begun to live his life.

00:18Just for fetching a box.

00:26This is Mahmoud Qassem's son, Hadar.

00:30He was killed while on his way to get an aid box for his family

00:33at one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's distribution sites.

00:38He's one of over 500 people killed so far while trying to reach aid sites or trucks carrying supplies,

00:46the Hamas-run health ministry says.

00:52He told me I'm in a safe place.

00:55He had gone to Netzerim distribution center,

00:57and I told him, take care of yourself and may God protect you.

01:00At 1am I tried calling him again,

01:03but his phone wasn't receiving calls.

01:06I started to feel anxious.

01:08The whole time there was no word.

01:10And I waited until 2pm on Friday.

01:12I felt like a fire was burning inside of me.

01:16I went to Nusrayat and headed to the hospital to look for him.

01:19Maybe he was injured, but he wasn't there.

01:22The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an Israeli-American organization,

01:28has blamed Hamas for the violence.

01:31The Israeli military claims to fire warning shots at individuals who pose a threat to its troops.

01:38The sites are within Israeli-declared militarized zones.

01:41Israel does not allow international media into Gaza,

01:46making outside independent verification of claims impossible.

01:51People in Gaza don't have much choice, said Mahmoud.

01:55The Israeli government only allows the trickle of aid into Gaza.

01:58We are living in conditions that only God truly knows and only God feels our pain.

02:05No one else does.

02:06Not Hamas, not Israel, not the Arab countries.

02:10No one feels for us.

02:16The family is from Zhezheir, a neighborhood in the east of Gaza City.

02:22They've been displaced multiple times.

02:24Now they live in the city's former main football venue, the Yamouk Stadium.

02:30Mahmoud himself has been to a GHF center in Rafakh in southern Gaza several times to try to get food.

02:39But I couldn't bring anything like other people, because I'm slow at running.

02:43I tried to gather aid from under people's feet,

02:46such as cans of beans, pasta and simple items that I could carry.

02:54He said it took two days for rescue services to get permission from the Israeli military

03:00to recover his son's body.

03:03My only goal was to go in and bring back my son's body.

03:06I just wanted to bring him back.

03:08This time we were able to enter and I found the Qadr had been martyred.

03:12His body along with the others was already partially decomposed.

03:16He lost his life, his youth, all for the sake of making a living.

03:20There are already many others like him, said Mahmoud Qasim,

03:26and probably many more to come.

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