‘My daughter’s bones were scattered on the ground’ – the harrowing search for the missing of Gaza

Aya al-Dabeh was 13 years old and was living with her family and hundreds of other refugees at a school in Tal al-Hawa, in Gaza City in the north. She was one of nine children.

One day at the start of the war Aya went to go to the bathroom upstairs at the school and – her family says – she was shot in the chest by an Israeli sniper. The Israel Defense Forces say they do not target civilians and blame Hamas for attacking from civilian areas. During the war the UN Human Rights Office said that that there has been “intense shooting by Israeli forces in densely populated areas resulting in apparently unlawful killings, including of unarmed bystanders.”

The family buried Aya beside the school, and her mother Lina al- Dabah, 43, wrapped her in a blanket “to protect her from the rain and the sun” in case the grave was disturbed and exposed to the elements.

When the Israeli military took over the school Lina fled south. She went with four other children – two daughters and two sons – to reunite with her husband who’d gone earlier with the couple’s other children. Lina had no option but to leave her daughter where she lay, hoping to come back and recover the remains for a proper burial once peace came.

“Aya was a very kind girl, and everyone loved her. She used to love everyone, her teachers and her studies, and she was very good at school. She wished well for everyone,” Lina says. When the ceasefire came Lina asked relatives still living in the north to check up on Aya’s grave. The news was devastating.