Lara, 18, “died from the heat” while trying to escape the Strip

“With great sorrow I announce to you that my 18-year-old younger sister, Lara Sayegh, was killed today while heading south from Gaza City.” The official statistics, in reality, will say that Lara died of heat. Because in Gaza the temperature is suffocating. But the sun isn’t the problem. «She and my mother were reaching Egypt for safety. My angel collapsed while walking on the “safe route” past the Israeli checkpoint, in an area where the Israeli military has long refused to allow ambulances, cars or other emergency vehicles.”
Since October 7, Lara had been living in the Catholic parish of the Holy Family, which had been hit several times by the Israeli army. Their house had been bombed. Although there were no armed men in the parish buildings, on December 21st Lara lost her father who needed medical attention but it was not possible to get him medicines or doctors. It was also impossible to evacuate him as well as the other 600 civilians sheltered between the church and the spaces dedicated to catechism.
The news of Lara’s death was broken by her brother Khalil Sayegh, a Palestinian Christian activist and president of the Agora Initiative: «My mother, who was accompanying her from the Catholic church in Rafah – he says – is currently in a coma due to shock. She needs your prayers very much.”
Those of Khalil are harsh words, which express a fracture that cannot be healed today: «Faced with the brutality of the enemy which has normalized every type of direct and indirect killing, we praise God as our judge and our refuge, even if we will not obtain the much needed justice on this land, we will certainly obtain it in the afterlife when we will all be before Christ.”
Lara and her mother had gone into debt to pay for the visa: 5 thousand dollars each. Leaving Gaza towards Egypt is almost impossible, and the fixers on both sides have set up a vile market: those who pay can save themselves, those who have no money remain under the bombs.
“I will continue to fight to obtain justice for my family and for the other victims of this genocide,” promises Khalil Sayegh.
According to sources from the local Christian community, who also report the pain of the parish priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, Lara will be buried where she died. Her body cannot be brought back to the parish of Gaza for her funeral.