Mum discovers Gaza home was destroyed when neighbour sent WhatsApp photo of bombed living room

A mum-of-three in Gaza has revealed the horrific moment she found out her home was completely destroyed by Israeli bombing. Alaa Radwan managed to flee Palestine in 2024, after their temporary housing was regularly subjected to nearby airstrikes. Her family are now living in Egypt, but plan to come to the UK in a few months so she can study a Master's degree in London. The mum said she found out their home was destroyed when a neighbour sent her a photo of their building - and there wasn't much left. Alaa and her husband had bought their home outright just a couple of months before Hamas's horrific October 7 massacre. "It was a really beautiful home," Alaa told the Mirror . "We had just bought it, like we cleared the debt a few months before the genocide. Like, imagine you are 30 years old and you've just bought your home. People in Gaza would have to be like 50 or 55 to own a home. We achieved that dream very early because we were working so hard." But, the Israeli army told Alaa and her family to evacuate the area on October 13 - coincidentally the same day as her birthday. They were displaced to the suburb of Tel al-Hawa, which is in the middle of Palestine. At this point, Alaa, her husband, and their three children under five were all sleeping in the same room - a staple part of war-time living. "We started sleeping in the same room, and you can't imagine how tough and terrifying the airstrikes were around us," she added. "My kids would panic at the beginning, but then I decided that I should convince them that these are happy sounds, and they're just fireworks. "So I would clap and cheer and say 'yay, it's fireworks'. Then they would hear the sound and say 'oh, it's like a birthday or a celebration'. So I tried my best to pretend that I'm not scared, although I was terrified inside." A month-and-a-half into the family's displacement, Alaa recieved the message she'd been dreading. She was part of WhatsApp group for everyone living in their building. Her home was on the fourth floor, but there were lots more families living inside the building, too. "One of the residents sent pictures of the building, and that's when we knew that our home was bombed. Months later, we asked someone to go there and send us pictures of the apartment inside." The photos they received were barely recognisable from the home they were living. It previously had plush furniture, mounted living room lights and spotlights, a wall-mounted TV, and huge red drapes. Now, the room had no recognisable furniture, cables were pouring from the ceiling, and there was a giant hole to the outside world from the corner of the living room. "It's devastating," said Alaa. "I'm one of these people who gets attached to things. So I have like plates which are about 15 years old. "I hold onto things for too long and I would get sad if I break a mug or I lose a pen. But after today, since then, I stopped getting attached to anything, you know." Six months later, the Israeli army bombed a house incredibly close to where the family were staying in Tel al-Hawa. Everyone was asleep at the time, and the lights from the fire engines and ambulances flooded the bedroom. "It was really close," said Alaa. "I was sleeping with my children in a room, and the glass and the windows all shattered into small pieces. It was really traumatic. On that day, I decided that we have to leave Gaza to protect our children." They managed to flee to Egypt, where they were forced to start their lives from scratch, she said. They had lost their home, their jobs, and their loved ones were still in Gaza. Alaa said she lost a lot of relatives, colleagues and friends in Gaza. Her family was forced to eat just one tiny meal every day to survive at the height of the genocide. "My dad lost a lot of weight," she said. "My mum too, as well. "I was in Gaza for seven months [during the Israeli attack], and we didn't have any kind of snacks, any sweets. Especially when a woman is nursing, she's craving for sweets. So I lost a lot of weight, too." But, Alaa is hopeful of a brighter future for her family, after she raised enough money to move to the UK. She was offered an unconditional place at Goldsmith's University in London to study a Master's degree in Media and Communications, from September this year. She said it was a dream for her to move to London, because it's a new beginning for a family that lost everything in Gaza. Her GoFundMe campaign hit £40,000 earlier this month, which is enough to start their new life. Reflecting back on her traumatic history though, she admitted life in Gaza would never be the same. "If I went to Gaza now, it wouldn't be the same at all," she said. "We had jobs, we had our homes, we had restaurants to go, we had the beautiful beach to go to. "Now, you don't have the same people, you don't have the the same places, the same street. You have nothing." You can help Alaa's family with their move to the UK by donating on her GoFundMe appeal