Sami Abu Salem"I put my hand on her chest
to stop the streaming blood.
She told me that she could not
breathe, her body trembled
and she closed her eyes,"
said Ra'd Abu Saif of his
12-year-old daughter Safa's
last moments after she was
shot by an Israeli sniper
last Saturday.
Safa was shot in the left side of her chest while she was
inside her home in Jabaliya, northern Gaza. An ambulance
tried to reach her but Israeli soldiers opened fire at it,
wounding a paramedic and causing the tires to lose air,
and so she bled to death three hours after she was wounded.
Her 39-year-old father Ra'd, 37-year-old mother Samar,
and the rest of Safa's family surrounded her, praying for
her safety. Her father pressed on the wound while her
brother Ali held her hands as her body was severely
trembling. She asked her father to help her to breathe.
"Dad, I cannot breathe, all of you
leave me please,
let me breathe, enough, enough,"
were Safa's last words,
according to her father.
Ra'd tried CPR, but he failed.
No more pulse and no more breath.
Safa had gone to fetch some clothes from the second
floor when, according to Ra'd, "the Israeli sniper on a
nearby building shot her in her chest."
The gunshot penetrated both her chest and the door
of the room, and blood poured from her chest and back.
"I heard a gunshot and soon her scream filled the house.
I went upstairs, [and saw] her knees gave in and slowly
she fell down while calling for her mother,"
said her 17-year-old brother Ali.
Her father carried his wounded daughter and tried
to evacuate her to the hospital but when he reached
the door of the house, his brothers prevented him
from leaving as Israeli snipers were shooting
anything moving.
Several phone calls later, the ambulance center told
the family to evacuate the girl. Her mother Samar
carried Safa but as soon as she left the house, the
Israeli soldiers opened fire at her and the wounded
girl fell to the ground. Samar dragged her into the house.
While Safa laid dying, the family waited as explosions,
gunshots, drones and helicopters sounded all around
them. Israeli forces cut the electricity and shot the
water tanks on the roof. The radio and mobile phone
batteries lost their power.
"We used water only for drinking; the smell of the toilet
filled our home and we used [text messaging for communication]
to conserve batteries," said her brother Ali.
"My uncle Nabil, 28, crawled from our house to his house
and brought a kerosene lamp, but it went out the same night,"
Ali added.
The following day the Red Cross intervened and
coordinated with the Israeli troops. The ambulance
arrived and took Safa's lifeless body; the Israeli soldiers
allowed only her farther to join her.
"Near the door of our house there were dead bodies;
the Israeli soldiers prevented paramedics from carrying
them away," Ali said.
Ali began to cry as he recalled his "clever sister,"
who shared many of his interests. "She likes sport like me;
she is also a good volleyball player and used to
participate in school championships."
The family could not afford paints for Safa to practice her
favorite hobby. "She used to [draw] landscapes with a pencil,
[there was] no money for colors," Ali said.
The school run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees,
UNRWA, where Safa studied is two kilometers from her
home. She walked the four kilometers round trip each
day after her unemployed father was no longer able to
afford the minibus that carried her and her sisters
to school.
The following Sunday morning, thousands of Palestinians
in Jabaliya refugee camp participated in Safa's funeral procession.
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