Family describe 'disbelief' after man's wife and two daughters killed in Iranian strike on Arab Israel town
Why you can trust Sky News
Cups of coffee are being carefully poured into small paper cups, each one served with a comforting embrace.
Close by, huddled under an arched courtyard, women of all ages are sitting, grieving in their own way.
Some are sobbing, others look dazed, others desperate.
Their intermittent wails of grief puncture the silence. Yet there's a beautiful stillness about it all.
We've arrived just at the moment Tamra, Israel, has come to a standstill.
Everyone here is waiting for the bodies of four members of the Khatib family to return, killed when a ballistic missile from Iran hit their home on Saturday night.
Manar Khatib was killed alongside two of her daughters - 20-year-old Shada, and 13-year-old Hala - and her sister-in-law, also called Manar.
Layan Diab, 23, is a cousin of the girls. She's in disbelief.
"It's a deep loss. It hurts my soul. We lost our entire family. Four people here. I can't fathom it. I don't understand. It's unbelievable," she says. And she's fearful of the coming days.
"Every time we hear the sirens, people start to scream and remember," she says.
Tamra is a tight-knit town. Most living here are Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Videos circulating online showed Jewish Israelis celebrating as the missiles fell, singing: "May your village burn."
It is a reminder of the bitter divides in this society, at war on multiple fronts.
"No-one is protected. Not Arabs, not Israelis, not Jews, not Palestinians, not Israelis," Layan says with a desperate frustration in her voice.
Just down the street is the girls' grieving father, Raja Khatib.
A lawyer with a charming warmth, he starts to speak Italian, assuming we may be from Italy.
He'd just returned from a holiday there with his wife and children in Ferrara.
His eyes fill with tears as he says that if only he'd stayed a day longer, they would all be alive today.
'I feel terrible. I feel fire in my body… I hope that I will survive this moment. I've lost my family, but for what? A missile from Iran?"
I ask if he sees an end to this conflict between Iran and Israel. He seems despairing.
"Conflict with Iran, Lebanon, Gaza. We have a government who want[s] war. We want peace. We want to live."
3:08
Listening in supportively from the side is his middle daughter, 17-year-old Razan, who miraculously survived the blast.
That evening, she'd been out to buy cookies with her sisters.
When they returned, Razan and her older sister Shada played music and watched videos on their phones.
When the alarms started to sound, they dismissed them at first.
But after a loud boom, Razan was unsettled and started to make her way to one of the safe rooms, imploring Shada to do the same.
But only Razan went.
0:24
"In one moment, everything went dark. I couldn't see anything. I asked Allah, please don't take my life," she describes with searing clarity.
She could hear her father calling out for them all. But his cries were met with silence.
Razan's family home is now a mound of rubble.
When we arrive there, we find neighbours and friends clearing the rubble. Many are deeply traumatised.
Hamad, who's sweeping debris outside the house opposite, tells me he saw body parts flung across the road and into a nearby garden, and there's blood on the walls.
It is a deeply visceral and harrowing account of an attack that took everyone by surprise.
This is a residential neighbourhood. It's thought the missile was bound for Haifa, more than an hour away and home to oil refineries.
But this time, with this missile, it fell on civilians. And took with it, futures.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
30 minutes ago
- Reuters
Hundreds of US citizens left Iran in last week, State Dept cable says
WASHINGTON, June 20 (Reuters) - Hundreds of American citizens have departed Iran using land routes over the past week since an aerial war between the Islamic Republic and Israel broke out, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters on Friday. While many left without problem, "numerous" citizens had faced "delays and harassment" while trying to exit, the cable said. It said, without giving further details, that one unidentified family had reported that two U.S. citizens attempting to leave Iran had been detained. The internal cable dated June 20 underscores the challenge Washington is facing in trying to protect and assist its citizens in a country with which it has no diplomatic relations and in a war in which the United States may soon get involved. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The cable was first reported by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump and the White House said on Thursday he will decide in the next two weeks whether the U.S. will get involved in the Israel-Iran war. Trump has kept the world guessing on his plans, veering from proposing a swift diplomatic solution to suggesting Washington might join the fighting on Israel's side. The air war began on June 13 when Israel attacked Iran and has alarmed a region that has been on edge since the start of Israel's war in Gaza in October 2023. Israel is the only country in the Middle East widely believed to have nuclear weapons, and said it struck Iran to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, has retaliated with its own strikes on Israel. Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not. The U.S. State Department in a travel alert earlier on Friday urged its citizens wishing to depart Iran to use land routes via Azerbaijan, Armenia or Turkey. Iranian airspace is closed. The U.S. Embassy in the Turkmenistan capital of Ashgabat has requested entry for over 100 American citizens, but the Turkmenistan government has yet to give its approval, the cable said. The Islamic Republic treats Iranian-U.S. dual citizens solely as nationals of Iran, the State Department emphasized. "U.S. nationals are at significant risk of questioning, arrest and detention in Iran," the alert said. Washington is looking at ways to potentially evacuate its citizens from Israel, but it has almost no way of assisting Americans inside Iran. The two countries have had no diplomatic ties since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Thursday said the administration was looking at different ways to get U.S. citizens out. "We're working to get military, commercial, charter flights and cruise ships for evac," he said in an X post, urging U.S. citizens and green card holders to complete an online form. As of Friday, more than 6,400 U.S. citizens filled out that form for Israel, a separate internal department email seen by Reuters said. The form allows the agency to predict an approximate figure for potential evacuations. "Approximately 300-500 U.S. citizens per day would potentially require departure assistance," said the internal email, also dated June 20 and marked "sensitive". The State Department does not have official figures but thousands of U.S. citizens are thought to be residing in Iran and hundreds of thousands in Israel. Israel's strikes over the last week have killed 639 people in Iran, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Israel says Iranian attacks have killed 24 civilians in Israel. "The U.S. Department of State received no reports of U.S. citizen casualties in Israel or Iran," the second email said.
Reuters
32 minutes ago
- Reuters
Putin says he does not want to discuss possible killing of Iran's Khamanei
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday refused to discuss the possibility that Israel and the United States would kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and said the Iranian people were consolidating around the leadership in Tehran.
Reuters
32 minutes ago
- Reuters
Trump says he hopes Israel, Iran can strike a ceasefire deal
President Donald Trump said on Sunday (June 15) that he hopes Israel and Iran can broker a deal but said sometimes countries have to "fight it out" first.
