For nearly nine months, Watfa Al-Nashnash has come every day to sit atop what’s left of her home in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. She’s looking for her children and grandchildren, five of whom went missing after an Israeli strike destroyed the family’s home on Oct. 20. 

Al-Nashnash sat in silence on Monday, save for drones buzzing overhead. Her adult sons Nael, 34, Nazir, 33, and three of her grandchildren — Atta, 12, Rola, 5, and Muhammad, 2 — are all missing.

She believes they’re all potentially under the rubble where she sits. 

“I call out to them, I ask: ‘Where are you, my children? Answer me … what happened to you?’ ” Al-Nashnash told CBC freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife.

“I hope for the day where I can say goodbye and bury them.”

Al-Nashnash is one of thousands of Palestinian relatives looking for children and grandchildren in the rubble of Gaza. In a report published Monday, Save the Children estimated more than 20,000 children have disappeared, been detained, lost under the rubble or buried in mass graves since war broke out between Israel and Hamas. 

Thousands of children buried beneath rubble

Al-Nashnash, 65, said she and her family were having dinner at home in the moments before the Israeli strike last October. Al-Nashnash, her husband, her daughter-in-law and two other grandchildren survived.

“We came out from under the rubble … and they took us to the hospital,” she recalled. “I look around … and I ask, ‘Where are you my kids? Where are you?’ “

In its report, Save the Children analyzed data gathered by its own personnel as well as its partners on the ground, including the United Nations and UNICEF. The latter has reported that 17,000 children in Gaza are “unaccompanied” or “separated from their families.”

The Save the Children report says roughly 4,000 children are buried beneath rubble. The report, which defines children as those under 18, also noted that it’s not known how many have been buried in mass graves across the strip.

“I mean, every imaginable scenario is not imagined, it’s happening,” said Danny Glenwright, CEO and President of Save the Children Canada. “But for us to imagine them is enough to send chills down our spine … It’s so horrifying to think about.”

In the nine months that Al-Nashnash has been looking for her family, the war between Israel and Hamas has destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure and wiped out entire families.

Israel launched its attack on the strip after Hamas led a devastating assault in southern Israel that left 1,200 dead and saw more than 200 civilians and military personnel taken hostage. The nation has said at least 33 Israeli children have been killed in the last nine months.

The health ministry in Gaza has said Israel’s responding offensive in Gaza has killed over 37,000 people, including roughly 14,000 children.

On Saturday, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the “intense” part of the war on Hamas would end as soon as Israel turns its focus to the northern border with Lebanon. 

Children in Gaza ‘just trying to survive’

The news isn’t what organizations like Save the Children were hoping to hear. 

“A definitive ceasefire is the only way to save lives and help children. There’s no alternative,” Glenwright said, noting the war has hit children hardest.

A UN report noted that as of June 13, more than 8,000 children in Gaza — one in three — have been “diagnosed and treated for acute malnutrition.” 

WATCH | Parents, doctors struggle to help starving children in Gaza: 

‘This is the most difficult tragedy’: Mother of malnourished child in Gaza

Ghanima Jumaa says there’s nothing she can do as she watches her nine-year-old son suffering from malnutrition at the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza, unable to evacuate to find care in another country since the Rafah border is closed.

Glenwright says Save the Children, which works to protect children in Gaza and reunite them with their families or next of kin, runs a field office in Al Mawasi on Gaza’s southern coast and has multiple teams deployed in the strip.

He says those teams have described “apocalyptic” scenes where children roam the desolate streets of Gaza by themselves, “just trying to stay alive.”

“They’re living in the streets. They don’t have a home,” he said. “So they’re suffering from dehydration, malnutrition, psychosocial trauma and they’re still in a situation of fear and terror.” 

In central Gaza, Al-Nashnash says she wants to stay near her children in case they hear her calls.

Every morning and every evening, she bids them good morning and good night.

Her voice breaks under the weight of hopelessness as she says her family has been broken apart by the war and that her life is now every parent’s nightmare as she continues to search for her children.  

“I wanted to see them to say goodbye, but this is my fate,” she said.