play videoplay video

Video duration 02 minutes 15 seconds 02:15

The famine experienced by the residents of the Gaza Strip forced Saleh Al-Haj Hassan to go out in search of something to feed his family. He did not know that the Israeli occupation was lurking around the Palestinians, directing bullets at them to turn their gathering to receive aid into a massacre known as the “flour massacre.”

The family of Saleh Al-Haj Hassan in the northern Gaza Strip faces a bitter reality, as it is displaced and has taken refuge in a school affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), but it does not only suffer from the threat of displacement, but also faces the specter of hunger that looms after northern Gaza has become He suffers from severe famine.

Saleh went out in the early hours of last Thursday to the Nabulsi roundabout, the site that witnessed the massacre when aid trucks entered, and thousands of hungry citizens gathered in the hope of obtaining bags of flour, but their desperation turned into tragedy when Israeli tanks opened fire on the crowd, causing It led to the fall of more than 109 martyrs.

Saleh witnessed what was happening near the Nabulsi roundabout in astonishment. He did not imagine that the journey of searching for food for his children would be dyed with the color of the spilled blood of Palestinians whom the occupation had dropped lava bombs on, besieged and starved them, and he was still waiting for opportunities to shed as much blood as he could of those who remained of them.

Facing death

Saleh, who was injured in his leg while trying to bring a bag of flour for his children, expressed his determination, saying, “When you see your children starving, you do not mind facing death to bring them food, and this is what prompted me to go to the Nabulsi roundabout.”

Saleh narrated the details of the horrific scene he witnessed in all its details: the arrival of trucks carrying some aid, and people gathering around them, then the bullets that the occupation fired at people’s chests, and how he saw people falling around him, including a 13-year-old boy, whom he saw lying in the middle of the road, bleeding from his chest. The traces of bullets that hit his young body.

Saleh returned to his home, bleeding from a bullet that hit his foot, and he did not know whether he was happy because he escaped death, or sad because the bullet that hit his foot prevented him from getting a bag of flour to support his children?!

In a tone of sadness, Saleh said, “My children needed someone to support them, and I was trying to do that, but then I found myself in need of someone to help me.”

No food for the family

Explaining the situation the family is experiencing, Ghazal, Saleh’s daughter, says, “We often slept without food... Even if there was food in the market, we could not buy it because of the high prices.”

The family has no choice but to eat pickled lemons, which is the only available food, so the family’s meals are limited to it.

Sherine Al-Haj Hassan, Saleh’s wife, expressed her regret, saying, “Sometimes I have nothing to feed my children except pickled lemons. Young children do not understand that the potato or carrot soup that we sometimes get from charities, along with pickled lemons, is all we can provide.” .

As for Ahmed, Saleh’s son, he longs for the simplest pleasures, saying, “I wish I could eat pastries and white bread... I miss flour, my home, and my uncles.”

In the Nabulsi massacre, known as the “flour massacre,” about 109 people were martyred and injured as a result of being exposed to direct fire from Israeli vehicles as they attempted to obtain flour from humanitarian aid arriving via Al-Rashid Street in Gaza City on February 29, 2024.

Source: Al Jazeera