'We just wish to be killed' Fear returns as truce ends

Last Friday morning, Reham Shaheen had a rare chance to talk to her husband, Muhanad, who had been sheltering with their family in Deir al-Balah, in the southern half of Gaza, shortly after Israel's military restarted its campaign of bombing.

- Dan Sabbagh

The aid worker, now in Jordan, had been separated from Muhanad and their three children because of a work trip two days before the war. Now she could do little other than listen to his despair down the line as Israel's air force struck again and again.

"He was feeling really helpless and feeling frustrated," said Shaheen, who works for the disability charity Humanity & Inclusion. "He told me, I'm really regretting that I moved from the north to the south because now the bombing this morning is targeting the south. I am afraid we will get killed after being forced to flee our home." The fear- and distrust - had spread to her two sons, 12 and 10, she said, because they had been told by their parents it would be safer in the south after Israel demanded the evacuation of the north in October.