As the sun set in Gaza City, Saddam al-Yazji, his wife, Heba al-Yazji, and their daughter broke their daily Ramadan fast over noodle soup at a folding table set in dirt at the foot of a pile of shattered concrete and twisted metal. Buried beneath the debris, the family said, are the bodies of much of their extended family, after an Israeli strike in December 2023 wiped out their home and nearly all of the relatives inside it.
Saddam al-Yazji, 35, described the way grief has traveled into the routines of the holy month. He said he looks back at photos from earlier Ramadan gatherings and then “cry[ies],” adding, “Where is my family? All are wiped out.” He also said, “It’s the third Ramadan without them,” as the family’s surviving members continued to live amid war damage that has changed how Ramadan is observed.
Before the war, the elder al-Yazji brought children and grandchildren together for iftar around a large table with meat and rice, Saddam al-Yazji’s wife said. Ramadan, a month that traditionally includes religious reflection and family charity, has always depended on community gatherings, but in the Gaza Strip many of those gatherings have been replaced by mourning at places where relatives were killed.
The December 2023 strike killed what the family described as 40 relatives in a single attack, including Saddam al-Yazji’s parents, three brothers and his sister, as well as most of their children, and his wife’s parents and siblings. The family said the strike happened only months after the Israeli bombardment escalated following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, and they said the house was leveled on top of everyone inside.
Saddam al-Yazji said his family survived by being in a different part of the house. He said, “We were in the same house, in other part of the house,” and added, “We survived miraculously.” The other survivors, the family said, were a daughter and the pregnant wife of one of his brothers, while among the dead they said were 22 children; some bodies were retrieved at the time, but around 20 relatives remained buried under rubble, including one brother who the family said is buried in a grave marked with sticks.
Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, families have been repeatedly hit by strikes that left entire households and tent shelters dead, with the Israeli military saying it targets Hamas militants without always publicly identifying specific targets, according to the reporting. The Gaza Health Ministry, which the article said is part of the Hamas-led government, has maintained casualty records that U.N. agencies and independent experts have described as generally reliable, though it does not break down civilians and militants, the reporting said.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Israel’s campaign has killed more than 72,000 people, nearly half of them women and children, and it estimated that about 8,000 more remain buried under rubble. The reporting said retrieval of most bodies has been out of the question while airstrikes and ground assaults were ongoing, but that after a ceasefire began in October, recovery efforts increased even as they remained hindered by a lack of heavy equipment.
When a ceasefire deal went into effect in October, Saddam al-Yazji, Heba al-Yazji and their daughter moved from tents elsewhere in Gaza City to a tent next to the old home site. Heba al-Yazji described the emotional toll of continuing to live after the deaths, saying, “Life is empty,” and “The war took everything from me,” and she added: “We wish we had died with them rather than remain alone.”
Almost everyone in Gaza, the article said, has lost at least extended family members, and nearly the entire population of 2.1 million is homeless, with most living in vast tent camps. It said more than 80% of the strip’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed, turning parts of neighborhoods like Rimal into landscapes of rubble, including around the site where the surviving family ate their Ramadan meal.
Saddam al-Yazji said the table is a reminder of the home’s past gatherings and how they all looked forward to Ramadan each year. He said, “I feel like I have betrayed them by being alive,” capturing a grief that the family described as lasting beyond the end of a fast, across multiple Ramadan nights that now pass without the relatives they said are gone.
The headline and text were drawn from reporting by Wafa Shurafa for the Associated Press.