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Palestinian mourners carry the body of six-year-old Rawan who was killed in the Israeli strike.
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GAZA CITY — Amna Hajaj was setting with her husband Farid and six children in their carefully maintained backyard garden sipping tea and grilling corn Saturday, July 6, much as they did almost every evening.
Suddenly their nightly routine was interrupted at around 8 p.m. with an Israeli missile that ripped into the family gathering, killing the mother, her six-year-old daughter Rawan and son Mohammed, 23.
"I went to light the coals to grill some corn," the 25-year-old son Shaban, who survived the attack, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) from his hospital bed.
"My brother and father stood up to walk Anwar (a visiting cousin) to the door because he was ready to leave. That's when I heard the explosion," he recalled bitterly.
"My little sister, my little brother, who just last week finished law school, and my mother are all dead now," said a tearful Shaban, his face burned, his left eye swollen shut, his leg broken and a right arm torn apart by shrapnel.
His brothers Khaled, 15, Roni, 14, and Ibrahim, 13, lie in hospital beds down the hall recovering from similar injuries.
Evidence
Their onetime beautiful two-story Hajaj home, well maintained and spacious by Gaza standards, was left in debris as it stands alone on Gaza's eastern edge.
The lush garden is filled with fig trees, grape vines, and bright yellow flowers in full bloom.
A rooster struts proudly in a chicken coop and a sand-colored mutt, chained to a fence post, barks at visitors.
"Their father worked hard to build this house," said cousin Nasser Hajaj, 40.
The surviving father and his 12 surviving children are now staying with some relatives. The evidence of the carnage remains, however.
Sandals with torn straps, a tea kettle, and uneaten corn cobs lie in puddles of blood. Pink plastic patio furniture has been blown to pieces.
Outcry
The corpses of the three victims were carried aloft through the streets of Gaza Sunday one day after the massacre.
While other civilians have died in the assault, the gruesome details of the Hajaj family deaths are likely to prove a rallying cry for angry Palestinians.
"If there was any doubt before, these martyrs have taught all of us that we are obliged to fight against the Zionist occupation," a preacher told hundreds of mourners at Gaza City's historical Al Amri Mosque.
The missile attack was one of the most grizzly since Israel began its massive offensive in the Gaza Strip under the pretext of releasing a soldier taken prisoner by three resistance groups.
Last month, Israeli gunboats shelled a beach in Al-Sudania area in northern Gaza, killing a seven-member Palestinian family and injuring up to 35 others.
An Israeli drone continues to whine steadily over Hajaj's house remains. Nearby, tanks bang out shells at two minute intervals.
"A relative asked the mother two days ago to leave the house when the Israelis came," said Nasser, the cousin.
"She said, 'We are believers, and anything that happens is from God. If we die, we die.'"
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