Cambridge resident says 10 family members killed in Gaza

A Canadian-Palestinian woman in Cambridge is speaking out after she says 10 of her family members were killed in an airstrike in Gaza.

A Canadian-Palestinian woman in Cambridge is speaking out after she says 10 of her family members were killed in an airstrike in Gaza.

The woman, who wants to remain anonymous out of concern for her remaining family in the besieged territory, says she was at a local mall when she got the news the area where her family lives was being bombed.

“We were trying to call but no one picked up,” she says.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, she says she had been in contact with family members a couple times a week. She says her family would update her after airstrikes so when she heard nothing from them on Friday, she felt something was wrong.

"We heard that there was bombings in the area where the majority of our family lives, which is middle of Gaza."

She says later that night, she received devastating news. The three-story apartment building her family was in had collapsed. Her aunt, uncle and cousins, who were on one of the lower floors – six adults and four children – were killed.

“I think the first night we didn’t sleep because we knew by then that whoever was under the rubble hadn’t survived, but the only two bodies they were able to get out was my aunt and her husband,” she says.