‘Death follows us in every form’: in Gaza, even the sand now kills

DEIR AL-BALAH: Aisha Al-Zain heard the cries of alarm between sunset and evening prayers on Sunday. People were shouting that a tent had fallen on Tahrir and her children.

Then came all the names, one by one: Habiba. Mariam. Tahrir. Ibrahim. Reem.

Al-Zain ran out barefoot, her head uncovered. Where the tents of her niece, Tahrir, and her daughter-in-law, Reem, had stood, there was now only a hill of sand.

“I found a mountain on top of Tahrir and her children, and on Reem and her children,” she told Arab News.

After a day of heavy rain, a sand embankment had collapsed onto tents in which displaced families were sheltering south of Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.