A Palestinian student in Malta, who is crowdfunding to get her family out of Gaza, feels she is “running out of time” as she claims their home was targeted by missiles and “burned down like it never existed before”.

Nour Zaqout said her father and uncles, who had stayed behind, had only left a couple of days before the house was hit a week ago.

“I was calling them tirelessly to get them to leave. They refused but thankfully they left in the end,” Zaqout said.

The 27-year-old says she has felt helpless and frustrated ever since she left Palestine to pursue her scholarship studies in Malta shortly before the Israeli bombing started in retaliation to the Hamas attacks on October 7.

“They left to live in tents,” she said, about her family’s desperate situation in a crowded and unsanitary camp, with no access to clean water, food, medicine, or electricity.

“But now, they have evacuated the tents too because these are also being targeted. There is no safe place, and they just keep on fleeing,” Zaqout said.

“I am running out of time, and instead of just observing from the outside, I want to help my family out. I want them to at least be safe.

“The neighbourhood I live in was targeted with white phosphorus, missiles and rockets,” she wrote on her crowdfunding page, updating donors as she attempts to raise money to help her family evacuate and cross into Egypt.

They barely escaped with their lives, but they lost everything we had

Zaqout claims it is an “open secret” that hefty fees of up to €9,000 a person – and rising – were requested at Rafah, the only border crossing.

She has raised more than €22,000 out of the €64,000 she needs to get her family across the border through her gofundme campaign: ‘Escaping Genocide: Gaza Evacuation for My Family’.

The student, who insists she would have stayed at home had she known what was in store only two weeks after she left, said members of her family remain unsafe in the south of the Gaza Strip.

“The situation is getting worse and more dangerous, the bombing is heavy, and a vast number of massacres are taking place everywhere, especially in the ‘safe’ south.”

Zaqout is informed military planes are everywhere, and “they shoot literally anything that is moving”.

The damaged house

She was last in touch with her family two weeks ago due to a complete blackout of telecommunications and internet, she said.

“They are living under constant fear and violence for the past few months. They have been forced to flee from one place to another, seeking shelter in tents, schools, hospitals, or anywhere they can find.

“They are exposed to the cold and rain, and to the constant threat of more attacks. I am afraid they will be hit as many tents were targeted and run over by tanks and bulldozers.”

The last time they had to flee was when they were staying near Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of the few functioning health facilities in the Gaza Strip, Zaqout said.

Many women have died or lost their babies due to the lack of proper care and the constant fear and stress

The area was among the hardest hit in Gaza – the Israeli military has stormed and besieged hospitals, preventing patients and medical staff from getting in and out.

“They barely escaped with their lives, but they lost everything we had. They joined thousands of other displaced people, who had nowhere to go.”

Among them is Zaqout’s cousin, Lama, who is due to give birth to her second baby by C-section. But the hospitals are overcrowded, understaffed and ill-equipped, and patients are being treated without anaesthesia, electricity, or water, she said.

“Many women have died or lost their babies due to the lack of proper care and the constant fear and stress,” she said.

“Lama, like many others, is terrified and in pain. She does not know when or where she will give birth, or if she and her baby will survive. She has no access to pre-natal care, ultrasounds, or any other medical service. She has no safe place as the bombs and rockets can hit any building at any time.”

Zaqout continued to appeal to the world from her home in Malta “to hear our voice, to see our suffering, to feel our pain, to stop this madness, to end this conflict”.