A family is reeling from the killing of a woman who walked for hours to an Israeli-backed distribution point with her son and daughter
Reem Zeidan was terrified of being separated from her children. As they trudged for hours through the ruins of Gaza towards a food distribution centre, she rehearsed over and over again with her 20-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son what they should do and where they should wait if an Israeli attack turned the column of hungry people into a chaotic, panicking mass and the family were torn apart.
It was the last conversation she had with them. She was dead before dawn broke on Tuesday, killed by a single bullet through her forehead. Her daughter and son spent nearly three hours beside her body, pinned down by gunfire.
“We went there out of desperation. Hunger is what forced my mother to go. She had been going every day for a full week walking six hours to get there and coming back with nothing,” Mirvat, her daughter, said in a phone interview.
A couple of days before, after Israeli forces had opened fire on the weary crowds approaching new Israeli and US-backed food distribution centres, Mirvat had begged Reem not to risk the trip any more.
