‘I could hear their screams’: Inside Gaza’s Al-Wehda Street massacre
At roughly 1:30am on May 16, Israeli forces bombarded one of the best-kept neighbourhoods in Gaza without warning, killing at least 30 people and forever shattering the lives of its residents. The primary street hit that night, Al-Wehda Street, lies at the heart of the Al-Rimal area in Gaza City and was once one of the few thriving thoroughfares in the besieged coastal enclave. However, all that changed in the blink of an eye.
Ruba Shabit, a fellow journalist working for Press TV, lives there and only by chance survived this Sunday’s massacre. For hours, I hovered over the phone, praying that no more bombs would land on her building, after receiving a brief phone call from her telling me about the carnage she had witnessed. At the other end of the phone, I had no idea what she must have been feeling, so interviewed her soon after the massacre to try to comprehend what she had just lived through.
“My street used to be the most beautiful street in the Gaza Strip. It’s the main road to Al-Shifa Hospital, and has schools, banks, institutes and markets as well. It really has a unique atmosphere” Ruba said. “Now everything is totally destroyed and I don’t know how I will ever go back to normal after all of this.”
I asked her how the attack started and what she remembered of it.