by Saud Abu Ramadan, Emad Drimly
GAZA, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- When 24-year-old Palestinian Abeer Harb said goodbye to her fiance Ismail Dweik over the phone on the night of August 6, she did not expect that she would lose him forever in a few minutes.
Shortly after they hung up the phone, Israeli warplanes bombed the young man's home in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah and killed the 30-year-old.
Ismail Dweik is among the nearly 50 Palestinians killed during a three-day conflict between the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Israeli army that broke out on August 5. The conflict also destroyed dozens of houses in the Gaza Strip.
When walking on the narrow street leading to her late fiance's home, Harb almost collapsed. She had walked along the same street countless times, but had never anticipated to see a mound of rubbles in place of Dweik's dwelling.
Harb wailed over his farther's shoulders in front of the rubbles.
"My soul died forever after the loss of Ismail and the loss of the dreams that we had been planning for," Harb told Xinhua.
Just few days ago, she was still the joyful young woman busily planning her wedding. She was arranging the apartment they would live in and finishing all the details for her wedding party.
"What was his fault? What did he do to be killed? We just wanted to get married, stay at a home, and have a small and beautiful family, but none of those things would be possible now," Harb was in tears as she spoke.
They had plans for a beautiful life before Dweik was killed. "We talked about all things about our life, but had never anticipated for a moment that everything would turn into a disaster," she said.
Salah Abdulaty, director of the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Gaza, lambasted Israel's attacks on civilian houses without warning.
Israel's claims that it only killed militants are "false," he said.
The latest round of conflict is the most violent since May 2021, when Israel waged a military offensive on the Gaza Strip for 11 days and killed 255 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. ■
