"We can't breathe": Palestinian woman documents Israel bombing Gaza Strip in alarming video
A Palestinian woman is documenting how her family’s and neighbours’ lives have been uprooted under bombings from Israel.
Plestia Alaqad is a journalist living in Gaza who has been posting videos on social media amid attacks from the Israeli government.
“Day 3…Still alive…” the caption reads on one of her posts where she describes how families are trying to take shelter in their apartments amid the bombings.
Mid-sentence, you hear a loud blast in the background and see a gust of wind raise Alaqad’s hair. She flinches slightly as sounds of shouting and cars honking fill the background.
“I was trying to explain things, but I think you can hear them now,” she says in the video.
“We’re inside the house right now and literally, we can’t breathe,” she adds while panning to the scene outside of her building.
Thick, grey smoke covers the city like fog.
“There is literally no view. You can’t see anything,” she says with a cough.
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In a follow-up post a couple of hours later, Alaqad says there was still no electricity or internet.
She shows the view outside of her building and gasps at the sight of the rubble.
She says someone in the street is calling out for an ambulance, but there are none.
The video skips to later that night as Alaqad and her family huddle in their apartment.
“We don’t know what’s happening in the world; we’re just here listening to bombs,” she says.
Her family and neighbours then decide to evacuate and are rescued by the Palestinian Civil Defense. Her post says they were taken to a hospital to take shelter.
“The Israeli forces bombed a university and a building near my home and I thought that was it. I didn’t have internet or electricity all day to check the news, the Israeli forces suddenly bombed an apartment in my building, my family and some neighbours [were] inside as no one warned us to leave then the Palestinian Civil Defense came to rescue whoever is in the building because it was burning after all the bombardments,” reads the post. “I still don’t know how I made it out alive.”
The video ends with Alaqad showing her apartment building in flames.
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On Saturday, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the country is at war after militant Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip fired thousands of rockets and Hamas fighters infiltrated the border in several locations.
This escalation is a culmination of hundreds of years of conflict between the Israeli government and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza.
The Gaza Strip has been under Israel’s land, air and sea blockade since 2007, confining over two million people in what human rights groups have deemed the world’s largest open-air prison.
A Canadian man from BC and one from Montreal were confirmed to have been killed by attacks from Hamas militants in Israel.
On Sunday, Global Affairs Canada said it was aware of a Canadian who died and two others who are missing. Daily Hive has reached out to the agency for an update on the death toll in Israel and the Gaza Strip.