'Croaking Crows' keep Gazans awake

Gaza: The sounds of the Israeli warplanes referred to by residents as the "croaking crows" keep frightful families awake every night.

Those who suffer the most from these "night croaking crows" are people who live on the top levels of apartment blocks near governmental compounds and ministries.

Those closest to the skies hear the bombs fall, but those near the earth are the first to hear the wails of mothers as they call for help.

Eighteen-year-old Mansoura Abu Amra sustained multiple fractures in her hands and legs after Israeli warplanes fired thirteen missiles at the family home near the government ministry compound in Gaza City while the family was sleeping.

When medics came to pull her family members out from under the debris her brother, 17-year-old Yahya, was left behind. When Abu Amra's mother arrived at the hospital to see her children she searched the building frantically for her son only to discover that he had been left behind in the rubble. Medics went back and dug between debris to find Yahya's body with no sign of life.

"We refused to leave our house because we have no other place to go," said Mansoura Abu Amra from her bed at the Shifa Hospital. "We are a family of 12. Where can we go to live now after they have destroyed our house completely? We will just wait at the hospital until God shows us what to do."

Terrified children

Umm Mahmoud Tasbih was cleaning shattered glass from the floor of her top-level apartment and explained that during Monday night's airstrikes the family left the building to sleep outside.

"We did not leave out of fear," she said, "but to calm down our children; the sound of the airstrikes terrifies them."

So the 47-year-old mother and her children slept under the rain.

The family will leave the house and spend the rest of the war with relatives.

Wurood, a high school student, was digging her school books out from the debris that was once her home.

"They will not defeat us," she said, "We will be steadfast on our land. I will learn and I will rebuild our homeland, and I will come back and sleep here in my room, in my bed and I will be fearless from their shelling."

To many people on this planet winter means holidays and blessing as well as unity as family members gather together and watch from their windows the blessings that come from heaven.

In Gaza, however, the situation is completely different. People watch the skies looking for warplanes, waiting for them to claim their lives, their children's lives and destroy their homes.

And if they survive they will wonder where to find shelter for their children from the winter rain and cold; if of course they survive.

Since the beginning of Israeli air strikes on December 28, Gazans have been forced to choose one of two options: Leave their homes out of fear for their lives and the lives of their children, or stay and wait for merciless Israeli missiles to demolish their homes over their heads and the heads of sleeping family members.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Gaza