A Month-old Girl is Pulled from the Rubble in Gaza after an Airstrike Killed Her Parentshttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5124042-month-old-girl-pulled-rubble-gaza-after-airstrike-killed-her-parents
A Month-old Girl is Pulled from the Rubble in Gaza after an Airstrike Killed Her Parents
Ella Osama Abu Dagga, 25 days old, lies in a van after being pulled from the rubble following an Israeli army airstrike that killed her parents and brother in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
A Month-old Girl is Pulled from the Rubble in Gaza after an Airstrike Killed Her Parents
Ella Osama Abu Dagga, 25 days old, lies in a van after being pulled from the rubble following an Israeli army airstrike that killed her parents and brother in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
As rescuers dug through the remains of a collapsed apartment building in Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday, they could hear the cries of a baby from underneath the rubble.
Suddenly, calls of “God is great” rang out. A man sprinted away from the wreckage carrying a living infant swaddled in a blanket and handed her to a waiting ambulance crew. The baby girl stirred fitfully as paramedics checked her over.
Her parents and brother were dead in the overnight Israeli airstrike, The AP reported.
“When we asked people, they said she is a month old and she has been under the rubble, since dawn,” said Hazen Attar, a civil defense first responder. “She had been screaming and then falling silent from time to time until we were able to get her out a short while ago, and thank God she is safe.”
The girl was identified as Ella Osama Abu Dagga. She had been born 25 days earlier, in the midst of a tenuous ceasefire that many Palestinians in Gaza had hoped would mark the end of a war that has devastated the enclave, killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly its entire population.
Only the girl's grandparents survived the attack. Killed were her brother, mother and father, along with another family that included a father and his seven children. Rescuers digging through the rubble could be seen pulling out the small body of a child sprawled on the mattress where he had been sleeping.
It was not immediately clear who would take the rescued infant girl in.
Israel resumed heavy strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, shattering the truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages. Israel blamed the renewed fighting on Hamas because the militant group rejected a new proposal for the second phase of the ceasefire that departed from their signed agreement, which was mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
Nearly 600 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including more than 400 on Tuesday alone, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Health officials said most of the victims were women and children.
The strike that destroyed the infant girl’s home hit Abasan al-Kabira, a village just outside of Khan Younis near the border with Israel, killing at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead.
It was inside an area the Israeli military ordered evacuated earlier this week, encompassing most of eastern Gaza.
The Israel military says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it is deeply embedded in residential areas. The military did not immediately comment on the overnight strikes.
Hours later, the Israeli military restored a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City, that it had maintained for most of the war, but which had been lifted under the ceasefire deal.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had returned to what remains of their homes in the north after a ceasefire took hold in January.
This Ramadan, Relief and Hope Bump against Uncertainty in the New Syriahttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5125460-ramadan-relief-and-hope-bump-against-uncertainty-new-syria
Residents walk in the market on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, in Damascus, Syria, Saturday March 1, 2025.(AP)
TT
20
TT
This Ramadan, Relief and Hope Bump against Uncertainty in the New Syria
Residents walk in the market on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, in Damascus, Syria, Saturday March 1, 2025.(AP)
Sahar Diab had visited Damascus’ famed Umayyad Mosque previously. But as the Syrian lawyer went there to pray during her country’s first Ramadan after the end of the Assad family’s iron-fisted rule, she felt something new, something priceless: A sense of ease.
“The rituals have become much more beautiful,” she said. “Before, we were restricted in what we could say. ... Now, there’s freedom.”
As Diab spoke recently, however, details were trickling in from outside Damascus about deadly clashes. The bloodshed took on sectarian overtones and devolved into the worst violence since former President Bashar Assad was overthrown in December by armed insurgents led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
This Ramadan — the Muslim holy month of daily fasting and heightened worship — such are the realities of a Syria undergoing complex transition. Relief, hope and joy at new openings — after 53 years of the Assad dynasty’s reign, prolonged civil war and crushing economic woes — intermingle with uncertainty, fear by some, and a particularly bloody and worrisome wave of violence.
Some are feeling empowered, others vulnerable.
“We’re not afraid of anything,” Diab said. She wants her country to be rebuilt and to get rid of Assad-era “corruption and bribery.”
At the Umayyad Mosque, the rituals were age-old: A woman fingering a prayer bead and kissing a copy of the Quran; the faithful standing shoulder-to-shoulder and prostrating in prayer; the Umayyad’s iconic and unusual group call to prayer, recited by several people.
Muslim worshippers pray during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, Friday March 7, 2025. (AP)
The sermon, by contrast, was fiery in delivery and new in message.
The speaker, often interrupted by loud chants of “God is great,” railed against Assad and hailed the uprising against him.
“Our revolution is not a sectarian revolution even though we’d been slaughtered by the sword of sectarianism,” he said.
This Ramadan, Syrians marked the 14th anniversary of the start of their country’s civil war. The conflict began as a peaceful revolt against the regime, before Assad crushed the protests and a civil war erupted.
It became increasingly fought along sectarian lines, drawing in foreign powers and fighters. Assad, who had ruled over a majority Sunni population, belongs to the minority Alawite sect and had drawn from Alawite ranks for military and security positions, fueling resentment. That, Alawites say now, shouldn’t mean collective blame for his actions.
Many Syrians speak of omnipresent fear under Assad, often citing the Arabic saying, “the walls have ears,” reflecting that speaking up even privately didn’t feel safe. They talk of hardships, injustices and brutality. Now, for example, many celebrate freedom from dreaded Assad-era checkpoints.
“They would harass us,” said Ahmed Saad Aldeen, who came to the Umayyad Mosque from the city of Homs. “You go out ... and you don’t know whether you’ll return home or not.”
He said more than a dozen cousins are missing; a search for them in prisons proved futile.
Mohammed Qudmani said even going to the mosque caused anxiety for some before, for fear of getting on security forces’ radar screen or being labeled a “terrorist.”
Now, Damascus streets are bedecked with the new three-starred flag, not long ago a symbol of Assad's opponents. It flutters from poles and is plastered to walls, sometimes with the words “God is great” handwritten on it.
One billboard declares this the “Ramadan of victory.” On a government building, the faces of former presidents Bashar and Hafez al-Assad are partly cut off from a painting; in their place, “Freedom” is scribbled in Arabic.
Haidar Haidar, who owns a sweets shop, said he was touched that new security force members gave him water and dates while he was out when a call to prayer signaled that those fasting can eat and drink.
“We never saw such things here,” he said, adding that he used to recite Quranic verses for protection before passing through Assad’s checkpoints.
He said his business was doing well this Ramadan and ingredients have become more available.
A boy buys sweets on the first day of Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, in Damascus, Syria, Saturday March 1, 2025.(AP)
Still, challenges — economic, geopolitical and otherwise — abound.
Many dream of a new Syria, but exactly how that would look remains uncertain.
“The situation is foggy,” said Damascus resident Wassim Bassimah. “Of course, there’s great joy that we’ve gotten rid of the cancer we had, but there’s also a lot of wariness.”
Syrians, he added, must be mindful to protect their country from sliding back into civil war and should maintain a dialogue that is inclusive of all.
“The external enemies are still there,” he said. “So are the enemies from within.”
The war’s scars are inescapable.
Just outside of Damascus, death and destruction are seared into some landscapes littered with pockmarked and ruined structures. Many Syrians grieve the missing and killed; many families have been divided by the exodus of millions as refugees.
Ramadan typically sees festive gatherings with loved ones to break the daily fast. Some Syrians huddle around food and juices at restaurants or throng to Ramadan tents to break their fast and smoke waterpipes as they listen to songs.
But this month’s violence in Syria’s coastal region has stoked fears among some.
The bloodshed began after reports of attacks by Assad loyalists on government security forces. Human rights and monitoring groups reported revenge killings in the counteroffensive, which they said saw the involvement of multiple groups. According to them, hundreds of civilians, or more, were killed; figures couldn't be independently confirmed. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the killed civilians were Alawites in addition to a number of armed Alawites and security forces. Syrian authorities have formed a committee tasked with investigating the violence.
Even before the bloodshed, while many celebrated the new government, others questioned what the ascent of the former opposition forces would mean for freedoms, including of minorities and of those in the majority who are secular-minded or adhere to less conservative interpretations of Islam. The new authorities have made assurances about pluralism.
Sheikh Adham al-Khatib, a representative of Twelver Shiites in Syria, said many from the Shiite minority felt scared after Assad’s ouster and some fled the country. Some later returned, encouraged by a relative calm and the new authorities’ reassurances, he said, but the recent violence and some “individual transgressions" have rekindled fears.
