A Picture of Her Grief Gripped the World. A Year On, Gaza Woman Haunted by Memories

The Reuters photograph of Inas Abu Maamar, face buried in the shrouded body of her dead five-year-old niece Saly, was taken days after Israel began its military offensive on Gaza.
It has become one of the most vivid images of Palestinian suffering during the year-long bombing of Gaza, Israel's response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.
Saly was killed with her mother, baby sister, grandparents, uncle, aunt and three cousins. Since then, Abu Maamar, 37, has also lost her sister, killed along with her four children in an airstrike in northern Gaza.
Abu Maamar has moved three times to avoid bombing, at one point spending four months living in a tent. Today, she is back in her home in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. Cracks run through the corrugated roof; a shower curtain covers a window-sized hole in the wall.
"We lost all hope in everything," said Abu Maamar, sitting amid rubble in the small graveyard by the family house. Beneath the debris, she said, lay Saly's grave.
"Even the grave was not safe."
Hamas' attack on Oct. 7 killed around 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and about 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's campaign in Gaza, with the declared goal of wiping out Hamas, has since killed at least 41,500 people, mostly civilians, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israel's military has said its bombardment of Gaza is necessary to crush Hamas, which it accuses of hiding among the general Palestinian population. Hamas denies this. Israel says it tries to reduce harm to civilians.
AIRSTRIKE
Before Oct. 7, Gaza had faced an extensive Israeli blockade following Hamas' takeover of the Palestinian territory in 2007. There was little work and imports were severely restricted but her family was settled, Abu Maamar said.
Abu Maamar lived with her husband near her brother Ramez' family, allowing her to spend much of her time with her nieces Saly and Seba and her nephew Ahmed.
As bombing intensified near the house after Oct. 7, Ramez sheltered with his family at his in-laws' about 1 km (0.6 miles) away. It was hit in an airstrike the next day.
When Abu Maamar heard she went straight to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. There she saw Ahmed, then 4, and grabbed him by the hand. She found Saly, dead, in the mortuary.
"I tried to wake her up. I couldn't believe she was dead," she said.
It was there that Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem took the picture of Abu Maamar cradling her dead niece, her body wrapped in a white sheet. The image was named World Press Photo of the year and won a Pulitzer Prize along with other Reuters images of the Oct. 7 attack and war in Gaza.
DISPLACEMENT
Israel said it had attacked 5,000 Hamas targets in Gaza from Oct. 7 until Oct. 17, the day of the airstrike that killed Saly. Palestinian health authorities said about 3,000 people had been killed by that point, including 940 children.
Israel's military did not respond to a request for comment on the strike that killed Saly.
In a comment six days after her death about the killing of another family in a different airstrike in Khan Younis, a spokesperson for Israel's military said: "Hamas has entrenched itself among the civilian population throughout the Gaza Strip. So wherever a Hamas target arises, the Israeli army will strike at it in order to thwart the terrorist capabilities of the group, while taking feasible precautions to mitigate the harm to uninvolved civilians."
By December, with Palestinian authorities saying the death toll in Gaza had topped 15,000 and Israel preparing to expand its ground assault to southern Gaza, Abu Maamar and other family members moved to Mawasi, a beach area where displaced people sought refuge in tents. They moved twice more as Israeli forces battled Hamas across the south, ordering civilians first from Khan Younis and then the city of Rafah.
Now back home, Abu Maamar says there is no point moving any more. She picked up Saly's favorite outfit, a black dress with traditional red Palestinian embroidery, and pressed it to her face.
"We are just waiting for the cascade of blood to stop."

Türkiye believes Syria's new rulers, including the Syrian National Army (SNA) armed group which Ankara backs, will drive Kurdish YPG fighters from all territory they occupy in northeastern Syria, Defense Minister Yasar Guler said on Sunday.

Türkiye regards the Syrian YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years and are deemed terrorists by Ankara, Washington, and the European Union.

The YPG spearheads an alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is backed by the United States and controls territory in northeastern Syria. Since the fall of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad two weeks ago, Türkiye and Syrian groups it backs have fought against the SDF, seizing the city of Manbij.

"We believe that the new leadership in Syria and the Syrian National Army, which is an important part of its army, along with the Syrian people, will free all territories occupied by terrorist organizations," Guler said during a visit to Turkish troops on the Syrian border with military commanders.

"We will also take every necessary measure with the same determination until all terrorist elements beyond our borders are cleared," he said in a video released by his ministry.

Ankara has demanded the Syrian Kurdish fighters disband, and has called on Washington to withdraw its support. The US military acknowledged last week it has 2,000 troops on the ground in Syria, twice as many as it had said previously.

On Saturday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Türkiye would do "whatever it takes" to ensure its security if Syria's new administration was unable to address its concerns.

A Picture of Her Grief Gripped the World. A Year On, Gaza Woman Haunted by Memories