Israeli strike kills mother, baby in Gaza’s ‘safe zone’

Diana Abu Daraz, 23, was killed with her one-year-old daughter Siwar on Monday night as they left their tent in al-Mawasi, the displacement camp west of Khan Younis that Israel itself designated a humanitarian safe zone. They were doing what they had just been ordered to do.

Seven minutes to leave, less than one to live

Families in the area received phone calls at 9:30pm from callers identifying themselves as Israeli army officers, ordering them out of their tents within seven to fifteen minutes, according to relatives who spoke to Mondoweiss. The bombing started before that window closed.

“When the missile hit, no one could see anything. The entire area was engulfed in flames,” said Saed Abu Daraz, Siwar’s uncle, who was outside the tent when the strike landed. “Suddenly, I saw Siwar lying on the ground beside me while her mother was still holding her. The blast had torn her mother’s body in half, and another piece of shrapnel hit Siwar in the head.”

Diana’s sister, Yasmeen Abu Daraz, said the family had barely begun to move. “We were told to evacuate, but less than a minute after the warning, the bombings began.” Diana’s father, Thaer Abu Daraz, said afterwards: “God chose this little girl to be among the martyrs.” Her grandmother, Wijdan Abu Daraz, put it plainer: “Siwar was born, lived, and died during this war.”

A ‘safe zone’ in name only

Around 100 tents were destroyed in the strike, displacing roughly 100 families who had already fled elsewhere in Gaza, and more than 20 people were wounded, according to accounts gathered by Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada. Al-Mawasi is an eight-mile strip of coastline that Israel designated a humanitarian zone with UN support, and where more than half a million displaced Palestinians are now sheltering.

At least eight Palestinians were killed across Gaza that day, including a second-grade schoolchild in Deir al-Balah, according to the Palestinian Education Ministry. The Gaza Health Ministry puts the total killed since October 2023 at more than 73,000, with over 173,000 wounded.

The Israeli military had not commented on the strike at the time of writing. That silence is itself worth recording plainly: no target, no justification, no account of why a phone call giving families minutes to flee was followed by a bomb before the minutes were up.

Not an accident, a pattern

The UN’s human rights office has said Israel “continues to kill entire displaced families” in the very zone it told them was safe. A warning call followed by an air strike inside seven minutes is not a targeting error. It is a system, and Diana and Siwar are two more people it was used on.