It was the night of 16 October 2023. After a loud explosion, my mother’s phone started ringing incessantly. The caller was my sister Alaa. The explosion had happened in the house adjacent to hers.
She told us that the three-storey house had turned into rubble and was being consumed by fire.
Many months later, I spoke to Hala Ammar, a dentistry student, who lived there.
What follows is her account of what happened in that house on that night.
In the 2021 war, a lot of people were killed in what has become known as the al-Wihda Street massacre. This took place near the backyard of the house I lived in.
I’d heard the news of the martyrdom of our neighbors and friends from the Abu al-Ouf family. Since 2021, I have been thinking about how the survivors of this massacre might have felt and how they had managed to survive under the rubble. ….more
