A year on, memories haunt grief-stricken Gaza woman

KHAN YUNIS: The photograph of Inas Abu Maamar, face buried in the shrouded body of her dead five-year-old niece Saly, was taken days after Israel began its military offensive on Gaza.

It has become one of the most vivid images of Palestinian suffering during the year-long bombing of Gaza.

The picture won the World Press Photo of the Year award and the Pulitzer prize.

A picture of Abu Maamar cradling her dead niece was named World Press Photo of the Year

Saly was killed with her mother, baby sister, grandparents, uncle, aunt and three cousins. Since then, Abu Maamar, 37, has also lost her sister, killed along with her four children in an airstrike in northern Gaza.

Abu Maamar has moved three times to avoid bombing, at one point spending four months living in a tent. Today, she is back in her home in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza. Cracks run through the corrugated roof; a shower curtain covers a window-sized hole in the wall.

“We lost all hope in everything,” said Abu Maamar, sitting amid rubble in the small graveyard by the family house. Beneath the debris, she said, lay Saly’s grave. “Even the grave was not safe.”

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2024