In the evening of the intensifying bombing, Salah Jundia and his family in Shujaiyya, located east of Gaza City, sought refuge in their home, trying to decide their next move.

Night evacuation proved too dangerous, partly due to the large size of their extended family spread across four storeys, so they opted to wait till after dawn prayers.

The building was hit just before 5 am, resulting in the collapse of one storey onto another.

Surviving by the grace of falling bedroom furniture, Jundia then scrambled to locate his father and brothers.
“I caught sight of one of them calling for help. I removed the rubble covering him by hand. Another brother was under rubble too, but he was dead,” he shared with Sky News.

His father and another brother had also perished, and after pulling their bodies out, Jundia realized the entire building had crumbled.
With subsequent hours spent in a desperate rescue effort, Jundia empathized with the helpless cries from people trapped beneath the debris.

The retrieval of an aunt, uncle, and their child was thwarted; trapped voices were indecipherable amidst the dense rubble.

According to Jundia, on-site civil defense lacked the equipment to penetrate three floors of solid 500 square meters with 30cm thick concrete slabs.