Daughter of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer killed in Israeli airstrike in Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestine

A daughter of Palestinian poet and academic Refaat Alareer was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City on Friday, about four months after her father was killed in a similar attack.


“Shaimaa Alareer, her husband, and their infant child were martyred in an Israeli airstrike targeting their home in the Al-Rimal neighborhood western Gaza City,” a medical source at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said.


The source added that “the bodies of the three martyrs were brought to the hospital earlier today, Friday, after being extracted from under the rubble of the destroyed house.”


Shaimaa, the eldest daughter of one of the most famous Palestinian poets, writers, and translators, got married about a year and a half ago to the Palestinian engineer Mohammed Seyam and gave birth to their first child about four months ago.


Refaat Alareer was killed along with several members of his family in an Israeli airstrike targeting them at their home in the Shujaiyya neighborhood last December.


Alareer was one of the most prominent young Palestinian writers in English, known for his book “Gaza Writes Back,” in addition to hundreds of articles published in Arab, European, and American media outlets.


For many years, Refaat taught English literature and poetry at the Islamic University of Gaza and was one of the founders of the “We Are Not Numbers” initiative, which paired writers from Gaza with mentors abroad to help them write their stories in English.


Flouting the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where at least 34,356 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 77,368 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.


Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.


The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.





*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala