A year after the image of her grief gripped the world, Gaza woman remains haunted by memories of her niece

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - A combination picture shows Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embraces the body of her five-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023 (left) and Inas visits a damaged cemetery where Saly was buried, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, September 11, 2024. — Reuters pic

KHAN YOUNIS, Oct 7 — The Reuters 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, Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 attack.

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 Younis, 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.”

Hamas’ attack on October 7 killed around 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and about 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza, with the declared goal of wiping out Hamas, has since killed at least 41,500 people, mostly civilians, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Israel’s military has said its bombardment of Gaza is necessary to crush Hamas, which it accuses of hiding among the general Palestinian population. Hamas denies this. Israel says it tries to reduce harm to civilians.

Airstrike

Before October 7, Gaza had faced an extensive Israeli blockade following Hamas’ takeover of the Palestinian territory in 2007. There was little work and imports were severely restricted but her family was settled, Abu Maamar said.

Abu Maamar lived with her husband near her brother Ramez’ family, allowing her to spend much of her time with her nieces Saly and Seba and her nephew Ahmed.

As bombing intensified near the house after October 7, Ramez sheltered with his family at his in-laws’ about 1km away. It was hit in an airstrike the next day.

When Abu Maamar heard she went straight to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. There she saw Ahmed, then 4, and grabbed him by the hand. She found Saly, dead, in the mortuary.

“I tried to wake her up. I couldn’t believe she was dead,” she said.

It was there that Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem took the picture of Abu Maamar cradling her dead niece, her body wrapped in a white sheet. The image was named World Press Photo of the year and won a Pulitzer Prize along with other Reuters images of the October 7 attack and war in Gaza.

Displacement

Israel said it had attacked 5,000 Hamas targets in Gaza from October 7 until October 17, the day of the airstrike that killed Saly. Palestinian health authorities said about 3,000 people had been killed by that point, including 940 children.

Israel’s military did not respond to a request for comment on the strike that killed Saly.

In a comment six days after her death about the killing of another family in a different airstrike in Khan Younis, a spokesperson for Israel’s military said: “Hamas has entrenched itself among the civilian population throughout the Gaza Strip. So wherever a Hamas target arises, the IDF will strike at it in order to thwart the terrorist capabilities of the group, while taking feasible precautions to mitigate the harm to uninvolved civilians.”

By December, with Palestinian authorities saying the death toll in Gaza had topped 15,000 and Israel preparing to expand its ground assault to southern Gaza, Abu Maamar and other family members moved to Mawasi, a beach area where displaced people sought refuge in tents. They moved twice more as Israeli forces battled Hamas across the south, ordering civilians first from Khan Younis and then the city of Rafah.

Now back home, Abu Maamar says there is no point moving any more. She picked up Saly’s favourite outfit, a black dress with traditional red Palestinian embroidery, and pressed it to her face.

“We are just waiting for the cascade of blood to stop.” — Reuters