The Story of Salma Al-Ajla

The Story of Salma Al-Ajla
A Horrific Massacre Engraved in Her Memory
This could serve as the subtitle or opening line for the story of Salma Al-Ajla, highlighting how the traumatic event left a permanent mark on her life.
The Story of Journalist Salma Al-Ajla
Salma Al-Ajla (24), a journalist, woke up to a red light. Stones were raining down on their heads on that rainy night. A cloud of dust and sand covered the building, making it impossible for her to recognize anything around her. On the evening of November 21, 2023, she felt unbearable pain in her legs, trapped under rubble, barely able to cry out as she searched for surviving family members.
“Is anyone there?” she shouted, but every call returned empty, with no answer.
For several minutes, she feared her family had been martyred, until the voice of her father calling her name returned hope to her heart.
When civil defense teams and neighbors arrived to evacuate the wounded and recover the dead, the dust cleared from her eyes. She saw the family home had turned to rubble. She and her immediate family of five survived with injuries, fractures, and wounds, but all members of the host family, the Riyati family, 30 people, were martyred.
Before the bombardment, clouds continued to drop rain on the room where Salma and her displaced family had taken shelter in the Riyati house in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. As water seeped through the zinc-plated roof, the host family welcomed them inside the concrete home, unaware that the sky would rain stones and that the house would collapse into debris.
The First Step
For the first time, Salma touched the ground after 90 days of lying in a hospital bed. A spark of joy filled her heart as she began taking steps toward recovery. She leaned on a walking aid, gradually reclaiming her strength in an Egyptian hospital, recovering from injuries sustained five months earlier, determined to return to her work as a journalist.
Through international media, Salma tells her story of the massacre in which 30 members of the Riyati family were martyred, using her proficiency in English to share her testimony as a witness and survivor.
Although she overcame the pain of her injuries, her memory remains scarred by the massacre:
“Before the bombing, the homeowners welcomed us, and we shared a calm day together. I had lunch with the children and gave them biscuits.”
She recalls:
“We sheltered inside the house and they brought us bread… During the bombing, I saw my father, and we searched for my brothers Ahmed and Hassan, who neighbors pulled from the rubble. We five survived, but no one from the Riyati family survived; they were wiped from the civil registry.”
Displacement and Treatment
Salma endured a long and difficult displacement, moving from Gaza City to Khan Yunis in the south, then to Deir al-Balah. Her treatment was equally challenging. At the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, limited medical resources due to previous attacks on hospitals made surgery difficult. After sustaining fractures and shattered leg bones, she required emergency surgery outside Gaza.
“I stayed on a leg brace for two months, in pain and taking painkillers. Infections worsened. I didn’t walk for 90 days until reaching an Egyptian hospital for surgery, and then I began walking,” she recounts.
The bombing and injuries cost her the opportunity to work with the BBC as an English-language correspondent, but she did not abandon her passion for media. From her hospital bed, she continued writing and speaking to international media about the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza, surviving a horrific massacre.
The occupation nearly took the young journalist’s talent and dreams of becoming a news anchor, but fate allowed her to survive and pursue her goals. Salma has worked in radio and print journalism, contributed to Al Jazeera blogs, produced digital programs, and hosted media workshops.
Thanks to her fluency in English, she is invited to speak at international universities about humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the suffering of students. Determined, she is reclaiming her voice for broadcast media, resilient in the face of trauma