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

A combination picture shows Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embraces the body of her 5-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023 (L) and Inas visits a damaged cemetery where Saly was buried, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, September 11, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
A combination picture shows Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embraces the body of her 5-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023 (L) and Inas visits a damaged cemetery where Saly was buried, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, September 11, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
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A Picture of Her Grief Gripped the World. A Year On, Gaza Woman Haunted by Memories

A combination picture shows Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embraces the body of her 5-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023 (L) and Inas visits a damaged cemetery where Saly was buried, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, September 11, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
A combination picture shows Palestinian woman Inas Abu Maamar, 36, embraces the body of her 5-year-old niece Saly, who was killed in an Israeli strike, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023 (L) and Inas visits a damaged cemetery where Saly was buried, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, September 11, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

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."

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Arab World

US, Qatar, Egypt, Türkiye, Urge Restraint in Gaza

Members of the Palestinian Civil Defense remove the rubble of a destroyed home as they search for the bodies of Palestinians killed during the conflict in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 20 December 2025. (EPA)
Members of the Palestinian Civil Defense remove the rubble of a destroyed home as they search for the bodies of Palestinians killed during the conflict in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 20 December 2025. (EPA)
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US, Qatar, Egypt, Türkiye, Urge Restraint in Gaza

Members of the Palestinian Civil Defense remove the rubble of a destroyed home as they search for the bodies of Palestinians killed during the conflict in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 20 December 2025. (EPA)
Members of the Palestinian Civil Defense remove the rubble of a destroyed home as they search for the bodies of Palestinians killed during the conflict in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 20 December 2025. (EPA)

The United States was joined Saturday by Qatar, Egypt and Türkiye in urging parties in the Gaza ceasefire to uphold their obligations and exercise restraint, the chief US envoy said after talks in Miami.

Top officials from each nation met with Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump's special envoy, to review the first stage of the ceasefire that came into effect on October 10.

"We reaffirm our full commitment to the entirety of the President’s 20-point peace plan and call on all parties to uphold their obligations, exercise restraint, and cooperate with monitoring arrangements," said a statement posted by Witkoff on X.

Their meeting came amid continuing strains on the agreement.

Gaza's civil defense said six people were killed Friday in Israeli shelling of a shelter. That brought to 400 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the deal took effect.

Israel has also repeatedly accused Hamas of violating the truce, with the military reporting of its three soldiers killed in the territory since October.

Saturday's statement cited progress yielded in the first stage of the peace agreement, including expanded humanitarian assistance, return of hostage bodies, partial force withdrawals and a reduction in hostilities.

It called for "the near-term establishment and operationalization" of a transitional administration which is due to happen in the second phase of the agreement, and said consultations would continue in the coming weeks over its implementation.

Under the deal's terms, Israel is supposed to withdraw from its positions in Gaza, an interim authority is to govern the Palestinian territory instead of Hamas, and an international stabilization force is to be deployed.

On Friday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed hope that countries would contribute troops for the stabilization force, but also urged the disarmament of Hamas, warning the process would unravel unless that happened.

Arab World

Lebanese Deputy PM to Asharq Al-Awsat: No Political Negotiations with Israel

Smoke rises from the site of a series of Israeli airstrikes that targeted the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of al-Katrani on December 18, 2025. (AFP)
Smoke rises from the site of a series of Israeli airstrikes that targeted the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of al-Katrani on December 18, 2025. (AFP)
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Lebanese Deputy PM to Asharq Al-Awsat: No Political Negotiations with Israel

Smoke rises from the site of a series of Israeli airstrikes that targeted the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of al-Katrani on December 18, 2025. (AFP)
Smoke rises from the site of a series of Israeli airstrikes that targeted the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of al-Katrani on December 18, 2025. (AFP)

Lebanon’s Deputy Prime Minister Tarek Mitri denied on Saturday that the appointment of civilian negotiators between Lebanon and Israel means that political negotiations have been launched between the two neighbors.

He told Asharq Al-Awsat that the negotiating team is primarily tasked with ensuring that the Lebanese army carries out Lebanon’s part of the ceasefire with Israel.

The army is close to completing the first phase of the agreement to impose state monopoly over arms in southern Lebanon, he added.

Other phases of the deal will follow to cover the whole of Lebanon.

Mitri added that attention must be focused on not giving Israel excuses to attack Lebanon, meaning Lebanon must meet its ceasefire obligations.

He warned, however, that Israel "could expand its military operations in Lebanon with or without excuses."

He noted that the United States appears to be pressuring Israel against launching a new war against Lebanon.

Lebanon is close to completing the disarmament of Hezbollah south of the Litani River, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on Saturday, as the country races to fulfil a key demand of its ceasefire with Israel before a year-end deadline.

The US-backed ceasefire, agreed in November 2024, ended more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and required the disarmament of the Iran-aligned group, starting in areas south of the river adjacent to Israel.

Lebanese authorities, ‌led by President ‌Joseph Aoun and Salam, tasked the Lebanese ‌army ⁠on August ‌5 with devising a plan to establish a state monopoly on arms by the end of the year.

"Prime Minister Salam affirmed that the first phase of the weapons consolidation plan related to the area south of the Litani River is only days away from completion," a statement from his ⁠office said.

"The state is ready to move on to the second ‌phase - namely (confiscating weapons) north of the ‍Litani River - based on the ‍plan prepared by the Lebanese army pursuant to ‍a mandate from the government," Salam added.

The statement came after Salam held talks with Simon Karam, Lebanon's top civilian negotiator on a committee overseeing the Hezbollah-Israel truce.

Since the ceasefire, the sides have regularly accused each other of violations, with Israel questioning the Lebanese army's efforts to disarm Hezbollah. ⁠Israeli warplanes have increasingly targeted Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and even in the capital.

Israel has publicly urged Lebanese authorities to fulfil the conditions of the truce, saying it will act "as ‌necessary" if Lebanon fails to take steps against Hezbollah, which has refused to disarm.

Arab World

Lebanese PM to Asharq Al-Awsat: 2nd Phase of Disarmament to Begin Soon Covering Regions between Litani, Awali

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and ambassador Simon Karam meet on Saturday. (PM's office)
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and ambassador Simon Karam meet on Saturday. (PM's office)
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Lebanese PM to Asharq Al-Awsat: 2nd Phase of Disarmament to Begin Soon Covering Regions between Litani, Awali

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and ambassador Simon Karam meet on Saturday. (PM's office)
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and ambassador Simon Karam meet on Saturday. (PM's office)

Lebanon would have completed the first phase of the army’s plan to impose state monopoly over arms, or the disarmament of Hezbollah, by the end of the year.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s office confirmed on Saturday that the first phase was close to completion.

“The first phase of the weapons consolidation plan related to the area south of the Litani River is only days away from completion,” it said.

“The state is ready to move on to the second ‌phase - namely (confiscating weapons) north of the ‍Litani River - based on the ‍plan prepared by the Lebanese army pursuant to ‍a mandate from the government,” Salam added.

The cabinet will meet at the beginning of the new year after the first phase is completed.

Salam, meanwhile, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the second phase of the disarmament will cover the areas between the Litani and Awali Rivers to its north.

The third phase will cover Beirut and Mount Lebanon and the fourth covers the Bekaa followed by remaining regions.

Lebanese sources said the army has completed most of its report on its disarmament efforts south of the Litani. It has completed the confiscation and destruction of thousands of tons of ammunition and military gear. It has discovered around a hundred military tunnels in the region.

As it stands, the army is unlikely to ask for an extension of the deadline to complete the first phase by the end of the year. It may ask for a “technical” extension for a few weeks if necessary.

Salam refused to go into the details of the government’s next step after it receives the army’s detailed report on the disarmament south of the Litani.

“The military has succeeded in imposing complete state authority over the regions from south of the Litani to the southern border, except for the areas occupied by Israel and from where it should withdraw without delay,” the PM told Asharq Al-Awsat.

He confirmed that the government will convene at the beginning of the year to assess the first phase of the disarmament, stressing that Israel must take reciprocal steps, such as ceasing its violations of the ceasefire.

This will not prevent Lebanon from moving on to the second phase of implementing state monopoly over arms, he revealed.

Progress hinges of Hezbollah’s cooperation with Lebanon’s efforts to limit possession of weapons to the state and move towards activating state institutions in the South and kick off the reconstruction process with the help of Lebanon’s friends, he added.

“Imposing state monopoly over weapons is a Lebanese need before it is an international one,” he declared.

Everyone should be concerned with facilitating the process to end the cycle of violence, he urged.

Salam met on Saturday with Simon Karam, Lebanon's top civilian negotiator on the Mechanism committee overseeing the Hezbollah-Israel truce.

Karam briefed Salam on the latest meeting of the Mechanism.

Hezbollah continues to resist calls to disarm, saying the ceasefire with Israel does not cover areas north of the Litani. Party officials continue to tie disarmament to Israel’s withdrawal from regions it occupies in the South.