After another airstrike pulverised Gaza, the two al-Breim sisters realised their mother Amira was missing and rushed to the scene, crying out her name and frantically sifting through the rubble for any sign of her, Reuters reports.

“It is like we’re in a nightmare. It is as though we are in a dream. A dream,” sobbed Samar al-Breim amid piles of collapsed concrete and twisted cables.

“I pray to God that I wake up and find out that it was only a dream and that it is not true,” she added.

“What did they do to deserve this?”

Children were also sleeping at the site of the airstrike in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, she said.

“The children were asleep, they are innocent, they were torn to pieces.”

Her sister Sahar said their uncles, along with their families, had perished, adding that she also should have been staying at her mother’s house overnight but had been unable to come due to a lack of transport.

“My mother is stuck underneath here,” she added, gesturing to the mounds of rubble.

“There is nowhere safe in all of Gaza.”

“We hope to God there will be a ceasefire because we have lost a lot — we have lost all our loved ones. We have nothing left,” said Sahar, continuing to call out her mother’s name.

Samar al-Breim clutched at a few random items amid the mounds of rubble.

“They (the Israelis) want to annihilate us […] Despite the pain, the death, the destruction they have caused, we will be victorious, God willing […] and we will be stronger than before,” Samar added.