Palestinian living in Cork fears for family: 'If that school is bombed, I will lose everyone'
Feel Ostaz: People Is Life Not Suffering Are Al That Living While 'you Other Worth ' Habib
As the death toll rises in Gaza after further airstrikes, Habib Al Ostaz, a 27-year-old Palestinian living in Cork, has lost contact with family trapped in Gaza as they have no power to charge phones or computers.
He watched his local neighbourhood in the north of the strip bombed into obliteration on media reports from abroad and his family fled to the south where are they are now all living in a UN school.
“My parents, my brothers and my sister are there and all my extended family — all my aunts and uncles. If that school is bombed I will lose everyone.
“I last spoke to them two days ago. They were looking for food and water. They are not safe.”
Power supply is so limited it is difficult to charge phones or laptops to communicate. And news getting to people displaced within their own country — which the UN estimates is now more than half of Gaza’s 2.2 million people — was so poor that Mr Al Ostaz would feed in news from abroad to his family in Gaza.
“There is no electricity. There are so many phones that need to be charged.
Thousands of people are crammed into that one UN school, he said, with demand for space there so high that people are also sleeping outside, hoping they will be safe in the school’s environs.
Some 5,087 people have now been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to latest reports from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Women and children have made up more than 62% of the fatalities, while more than 15,273 people have been injured, according to reports.
Some 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, the vast majority in the Hamas attacks on October 7, according to Israeli official sources quoted on the UN website.
A tiny trickle of aid has been getting into Gaza since Saturday but many people still have no access to it.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said lives depended on getting aid through and he issued a new appeal on Monday for “sustained safe passage” for medical essentials and fuel to keep health facilities open.
Every day is now a constant worry for Mr Al Ostaz.
“You feel that life is not worth living while other people are suffering," he said.
“There's two million people in Gaza. And they need like 500 trucks [of aid] every single day to survive. So now it's almost 17 days with only a few trucks.
“How many people will they kill tomorrow? There are people breathing in Gaza today who will be killed tomorrow.
“And the worst thing is other countries are still standing with Israel, saying it has a right to defend itself. To defend itself how? By killing the children? By destroying everything in Gaza?”