On the ground in Gaza City, Zeteo speaks to the principals of a nursery school who had to calm young children and get them to safety amid Israeli gunfire and heavy bombardment near their school.
By Ansam Elkattaa, reposted from Zeteo, September 1, 2026
GAZA CITY – A routine morning at a Gaza City nursery turned into chaos when an Israeli operation to detain a Hamas official unfolded around it, leaving nearly 200 children between the ages of 4 and 5 trapped between gunfire, airstrikes, and a staff trying to convince them it was fireworks.
Doaa Qadeeh was still shaking hours later. Speaking haltingly, her voice breaking, she told me over the phone: “My body would not stop trembling.” She could barely get the words out.
Qadeeh is the head of the kindergarten department at Abdul Aziz Model School, in Gaza City’s western Katiba area, across from the American Hospital.
Earlier on Tuesday, she had gone live on video in the middle of an Israeli operation, pleading for the safety of the children in her care.
“I have more than 200 children right now,” she said in the video, sobbing, as the sound of explosions and children crying filled the background. “Isn’t the war supposed to be over?” Across from the hospital, the location of the school, she said, was meant to be one of the safer areas in Gaza – a place where children could come to learn and live in peace and security. Instead, she and 200 children were being evacuated by the Red Cross under bombing and explosions.
Around her, parents, ambulances, and small buses scrambled to move children and families out. Some parents ran toward the school clutching their children the moment they reached them. Others ran through the crowd screaming out their children’s names, panicked, unable to find them.
In a statement posted to X, the Israeli military said it had carried out a “targeted operation” and “apprehended” the head of Hamas’s internal security in Gaza to “remove threats posed by Hamas in northern Gaza.”
It claimed the apprehended man, who wasn’t identified, had recently worked to consolidate Hamas control over northern Gaza and to advance attacks against Israeli troops stationed near the so-called Yellow Line.
Gaza’s Interior Ministry in the Hamas government said that internal security officer Moeen al-Arabid was abducted by a special Israeli force during the raid on the Katiba area, after he was wounded in clashes with the unit, and that his wife was killed in the operation.
The ministry added that the broader strikes killed a woman and two children and left many others wounded, stating: “The occupation abducted the officer… while his wife was martyred and a number of his children were wounded.”
Khalil al-Deqran, spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, said in local media reports that Israeli forces carried out multiple airstrikes across Gaza governorate over more than an hour, targeting residential areas and civilians, while bombardment continued near hospitals, among them the Al-Shifa Medical Complex. He said the death and injury toll from the day was not yet final.
Israeli forces have killed more than 1,320 Palestinians and wounded at least 4,398 since the so-called “ceasefire” was declared nearly a year ago, according to the Ministry of Health.
‘Bombing and Gunfire Everywhere’
Randa Nasrallah, deputy head of the kindergarten and school, working under Qadeeh, said the day had begun like any other. Twelve staff teachers and 200 pupils went through their normal morning routine, activities and games in the schoolyard, before heading to the classrooms.
Then, after 10am local time, they began to hear gunfire and shelling.
“At first we thought it was a fight between two families,” Nasrallah told me. “But then things escalated, and there was bombing and gunfire everywhere.”
From that moment, she said, the staff had one goal: protect the children and get them out safely. With close to 200 children spread across classrooms, teachers first tried to move them to a spot shielded from all four directions, worried that quadcopter drones were firing indiscriminately outside, while Apache helicopters and F-16s flew overhead. The staff focused everything on controlling the situation and keeping the children safe.
Nasrallah, who has first-aid training, said the instinct that training teaches – protect yourself first – gave way to something else.
“These are children,” she said. “We have to protect them.”
“We have lived through a painful war for three years,” she added, “and I always imagined something like this could happen to us, that we might go through a moment like this.”
She told Qadeeh they were close to the Red Cross and urged her to call for help evacuating the children safely, so they could then notify parents to come and get them. The Red Cross responded quickly, she said, and staff carried out the evacuation over what she estimated as roughly five hours. As soon as the call with the Red Cross ended, communications and network access in the area cut out entirely.
In a matter of moments, Nasrallah said, a morning of joy and activity turned into terror. The children screamed and cried. Staff tried to calm them, telling them the explosions were fireworks, sounds from a wedding celebration, anything to soften what was happening. Teachers did what they could to ease the moment; outside, parents were gripped by fear of their own.
The irony was not lost on her: the school year had begun only a week earlier, and from day one, staff had been working to prepare the children psychologically, to ease them back into learning, to soften for them the weight of the war they’d grown up under.
In an instant, the occupation undid everything they had built. Now, she said, a child tells his mother: “I’m scared, I don’t want to go to school, there are Israelis there, there’s bombing.”
No children from the school were physically injured in the raid or the evacuation, according to Nasrallah, but for a generation already worn down by nearly three years of war, the violence was one more layer on a psychological toll that never really has time to heal.
Classes have been suspended on Wednesday for administrative matters, Nasrallah said, and staff were planning a recreational activity on Thursday with parents present so the children could feel safe again and rebuild trust in the kindergarten.
She noted, grimly, that the school term for older children had been delayed until Sept. 16. “Had regular classes already been underway,” she said, “the toll could have been far worse, and staff would not have been able to control the situation at a facility that houses both a nursery and a school.”
Running Toward the Gunfire to Find His Daughter
Loay al-Masri, 42, is a father of three daughters. He was used to walking his youngest, 5-year-old Maria, to the kindergarten. He lives near Abu Mazen Circle, west of Gaza City, and has been displaced roughly 18 times over the course of the war.
That morning, around 8am, he left home with Maria, stopped at the nearest shop to buy her sweets, and walked her to the kindergarten, as he did for the past week.
Al-Masri and his wife had been careful since their eldest daughter was born to send their children to the best schools available, and his older daughters had excelled. Maria, born just months before the war began, hadn’t been given the same kind of attention as her sisters, so when the kindergarten opened, he made sure she was enrolled somewhere he considered exceptional.
“Our life is steeped in pain,” he said, “and I try to find some piece of life in it anyway.” His goal, he said, was simple: to get his daughter into a good kindergarten, so she could be like her sisters.
Living close to Abu Mazen Circle, not far from the site, he heard the gunfire and shelling almost immediately on Tuesday morning but couldn’t place it. There were strange sounds, he said, but no way to tell exactly where they were coming from. The moment was overwhelming, and the sound of the bombardment terrifying. He tried repeatedly to reach the school. Communications were difficult, but when he finally got through, the director told him she had contacted the Red Cross, and they were coming to evacuate – the danger was too close, too great, for anyone else to approach.
Al-Masri didn’t wait. He said he began running, gripped by terror for his daughter. Neighbors called after him, asking where he was going; it was too dangerous. He told them he was going to get his daughter.
The scene, he said, was chaos: people fleeing in every direction, no one sure where was safe.
“Honestly, you didn’t know what was happening – like doomsday,” he said. People warned him not to get closer, that it was dangerous, but he couldn’t stop to listen. His only thought was reaching Maria, holding her, protecting her.
As he got closer, he saw ambulances moving from a distance, transferring students and children who were crying and screaming. He ran alongside other parents doing the same, a scene, he said, of unbearable pain.
He searched for his daughter, calling her name, and couldn’t find her. He searched twice more. He couldn’t see her, and she couldn’t hear him over the chaos. Then he spotted her. He reached through a window and picked her up without waiting for a door to open.
His only goal in that moment was to keep her from feeling afraid. He held her and, instead of running, forced himself to walk steadily, telling her: this is fireworks; don’t be scared.
“You’re strong,” he told her, “you’re brave, don’t be afraid,” and she began repeating the words back to him.
He said the school had acted wisely and with maturity. Maria told him the staff had tried to calm the children, telling them it was the sound of a wedding party and fireworks.
As they neared home, he set her down and let her walk the rest of the way on her own, so she could arrive without fear. He let Maria laugh, let her sisters embrace her, put on music for her, and let her dance – giving her a small moment of joy after a day marked by terror and a childhood marked by genocide.
Ansam Elkattaa is a Freelance Palestinian journalist from Gaza working across print, radio, and mobile journalism specialized in human-interest storytelling
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