Latest news with #Lulu
The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
‘It's the low-key moments that stay with us': the secret to happy summer holidays with the kids
On a walk with my children, now in their mid-20s, I asked them what they remembered best from their school summer holidays. I expected to hear about the fiesta we witnessed in the heat of Tarifa, Spain, or be berated for the time I booked early flights to Crete, leaving us sitting in the waiting room of a resort from 4am until check-in time. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. I was greatly amused (and slightly relieved), then, to hear my son say: 'Our summer books – that time we collected all those random things, took them home and stuck them into a book.' He was delighted that we've kept them. My daughter said: 'Soup on the beach.' We'd stayed on the Isles of Scilly (one of our favourite destinations), and had promised them a bonfire next to the sea on our last night. Of course, by the time we got around to it, night was falling – and with it the temperature – and poor four-year-old Lulu got tired and cold. We wrapped her in a blanket, propped her on a rock and gave her a mug of bonfire-heated tinned soup – and watched as the colour sprang back into her cheeks. The point of this (rather sentimental) reminiscing is to show that you don't need expensive foreign holidays or trips to amusement parks for your children to have a good summer. It's the low-key moments that tend to stay with us – and they can be as simple as a fun craft activity or a makeshift meal under the stars. Sure, lazing on a beach in the Algarve for a week or two is what keeps parents going through the winter months, but the 4am start for the ferry or the queues at passport control can start to undo the benefits of a holiday. If you're looking for ways to entertain your children during the holidays but sadly can't just down tools and take the day off, read our guide to the summer holidays. It includes lots of ideas for inexpensive activities to do around your home or garden, from den-building to arts and crafts, as well as short and longer days out. We've also rounded up the best garden games for children of all ages. Don't ever feel guilty about not being with your children for the entire school summer holidays, nor for amusing them with low-cost activities. Sometimes, the simplest activities turn out to be their most memorable. The best wedding gifts in the UK: 13 ideas that couples will actually want The best moisturising lip balms to hydrate and protect your lips The best gins for G&Ts, martinis and negronis, from our taste test of 50 'Unbelievably terrible': the best (and worst) supermarket vanilla ice-cream, tested and rated 'It's hard to know what to wear when the sun comes out,' says fashion and lifestyle editor Morwenna Ferrier, 'so it always seems strange just how little thought we give to it.' But we've done all the thinking for you in our bumper guide to summer dressing, with 69 ideas for women, men and the kids. From a spicy marg T-shirt and a purse for your beach change to perfect men's shorts and a bag charm for grownups, there's something here to suit every summer style. Monica HorridgeDeputy editor, the Filter If you've ever planned to spend the evening outside only to be tempted back on to the living room sofa, it may be time to upgrade your garden furniture. Whatever the size of your outdoor space, there'll be a sofa, bistro seat or bench to suit in design expert Claudia Baillie's guide to the best garden furniture. There are also tips for buying vintage or secondhand furniture if you'd rather avoid buying anything new. Have you made an eco-friendly swap that's stuck? Maybe you found a microfibre cloth that transformed your skincare routine, plastic-free cleaning products that actually work, or a shopping tote that finally broke your addiction to plastic bags. Let us know by replying to this newsletter or emailing us at thefilter@
The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Best pictures as Lulu delights HebCelt crowd with rousing performance
But it is Scotland where her 'soul is' and she entertained the thousands in attendance at the festival in Stornoway. Her 90 minute set began with Shout and it whipped the crowd into a frenzy that did not stop throughout the rest of the night. She sang songs from throughout her six decade long career with other tracks including Boom Bang A Bang, Golden Gun, To Sir With Love, and We've Got Tonight before ending on a flourish of Relight My Fire, Still Standing and a final full reprise of Shout, winning her a massive roar of approval from fans who packed into the main tent. Read More Artist Programmer Michelle Shields said: 'Lulu was sensational, the crowd lapped up every single moment to make this one of the most special HebCelt nights ever. It was such a beautiful moment to see people young and old singing along.' Lulu – who is changing up her style of touring to promote her memoir If Only You Knew which comes out in September - was also on hand to meet 18-year-old Isla Scott and give the Isle of Harris youngster so Isla said: 'She is such an inspiration, really amazing. It's for sure a night I'll never forget.' Lulu with Isla Scott ahead of her performance (Image: Handout) Lulu during her performance (Image: Handout) It was another successful day for the festival with acts such as Beluga Lagoon, Laura Silverstone, Trail West, LUSA, The Tumbling Souls, Josie Duncan, El Sartel and Madison Violet all entertaining the crowds. Saturday's final day will see headliners Skerryvore close out the festival with special guests to be revealed on the night as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations. El Sartel also performed (Image: Handout) Other big name acts performing include Nina Nesbitt, Kassidy, Astro Bloc, and Gaelic childhood favourite Donnie Dòtaman. Carol Ferguson, the festival's Operations Co-Ordinator, said: 'The smiles on people's faces say it all, it's been a tremendous day, ticket sales have been busy all day long, and the choice of music across the site has been incredibly diverse. 'It's just part of what makes this festival so uniquely special.'
The Guardian
4 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Killing of young siblings at Gaza water point shows seeking life's essentials now a deadly peril
In Gaza, being a helpful, loving child can be a death sentence. Heba al-Ghussain's nine-year-old son, Karam, was killed by an Israeli airstrike because he went to fetch water for the family, and her 10-year-old daughter, Lulu, was killed because she went to give Karam a hand. The siblings were waiting beside a water distribution station, holding jerry cans and buckets, when it was bombed last Sunday, killing six children and four adults and injuring 19 others, mostly children. Both Lulu and Karam died instantly, torn apart by the force of the blast and so disfigured that their father prevented Heba from seeing their bodies. 'They didn't allow me to say goodbye or even look at them one last time,' she said. 'One of my brothers hugged me, trying to block the scene from me as he cried and tried to comfort me. After that, I don't remember anything. I lost touch with reality.' Lulu's real name was Lana but her parents rarely used it because her nickname, which means pearl, captured the gentle shine she brought to family life. 'She had such a joyful personality, and a heart full of kindness,' Heba said. Karam was smart, always top of his class until Israeli attacks shut down Gaza's schools, generous and mature beyond his years. His dad, Ashraf al-Ghussain, called him 'abu sharik' or 'my partner', because he seemed 'like a man in spirit'. But he was also enough of a child to be obsessed by a remote-controlled car that he begged his mother to buy. She regrets telling him they needed to save money for food. 'I wish I had spent everything I had to buy it for him so he could have played with it before he died.' Both children also dreamed of the day Israel would lift its blockade of Gaza, so they could taste chocolate, instant noodles and their mum's best dishes. For Lulu that was the Palestinian chicken dish musakhan, for Karam, shawarma. 'They had all kinds of food plans for me to prepare,' Heba said. Israel imposed a total siege for 11 weeks starting in March that brought Gaza to the brink of famine, and the very limited food, fuel and medical supplies allowed in since May have not relieved extreme hunger. Unprecedented malnutrition is killing children, and preventing injured people recovering, a British doctor working there said this week. Trying to get food has been a deadly gamble for months, with more than 800 people killed since late May in near daily attacks by Israeli soldiers using weapons including tank shells and navy cannon to target desperate crowds near food distribution points. Trying to get clean water is also a struggle. Nearly two years of Israeli attacks have destroyed water treatment plants and pipe networks. In June Unicef warned that Gaza faces a human-made drought and that without fuel to operate remaining stations children could start dying of thirst. But until Sunday, there had not been any mass killings of people trying to collect water. The al-Ghussains sent their children to collect supplies for the family because they thought it was less dangerous than searching for food. Aid groups brought water in trucks to fill tanks at a water distribution station just a few streets away from the school where the family sought shelter after their own home was bombed. Karam would wait there in the sweltering heat for his turn at taps that often ran dry. 'I had no choice but to send them,' Heba said. 'Many times, my son would go and wait for his turn, sometimes for an hour, only to end up with nothing because the water would run out before it reached everyone.' When he did get water, it was only 20 litres, very little for a family of seven but a heavy weight for a young boy. 'Karam was only nine years old and braver than dozens of men. He carried it without tiring or complaining.' The long queues meant that Heba was not too worried when she heard the water station was hit. Her son left home not long before the bombing, so she assumed he would still have been at the back of a waiting crowd, some distance from the blast. As it turned out the queue was relatively small when he arrived, a stroke of fatally bad luck that probably delighted Karam in his last few minutes. It meant that when the bomb hit, he and his sister were right beside water station. 'When Lulu woke up, I told her to go help her brother carry the water containers. It was as if the missile was waiting for her to arrive to strike that place,' Heba said. Ali Abu Zaid, 36, was one of the first on the scene, rushing to help survivors. As the dust and smoke cleared they revealed a horrific tableau. 'Each child was holding a water bucket, lying dead in place, covered in their own blood. The shrapnel had torn through their small bodies and disfigured their faces. The smell of gunpowder filled the area,' he said. People started loading the dead and injured on to donkey carts, as medical teams were slow to arrive, but there was nothing doctors could do for most of the victims. 'Even if the ambulances had got there sooner, it wouldn't have made a difference. There was no saving anyone, these were lifeless bodies, completely shattered.' Ashraf raced to look for his children as soon as he heard the blast, but arrived after their bodies had been taken away to find only blood-stained water containers scattered on the street, and a terrifying silence. So he headed to hospital to continue the search, where he found their battered bodies laid out on the floor, and collapsed over them in grief. He married in his 30s, late for Gaza, and when his children arrived they became his world. Karam and Lulu's brutal deaths have shattered him. 'When I saw them like that, I felt as if my heart was being stabbed with knives,' he said. 'I'm still in shock. I've become constantly afraid of losing the rest of my family and being left alone. I feel as if I'm going to lose my mind.' Heba also went to look for Lulu and Karam at the water station but then headed back to the shelter, hoping to find them waiting with their dad. Perhaps she had learned a kind of grim optimism from previous brushes with death. The siblings had been rescued from the rubble of their home when an airstrike brought it down on top of them earlier in the war, and survived injuries after another bomb hit nearby. That streak would not last. 'They survived twice, but not the third time,' Heba said. Word of the children's fate had reached the school, but even in Gaza, where no family has escaped tragedy, the scale of Heba's loss was shocking. 'The news of their martyrdom was already spreading, but no one told me,' she said. 'No one dared to deliver such terrible news.' Instead they encouraged her to go look for them among the injured in al-Awda hospital. There she found her husband, and the shattered bodies of their beloved son and daughter, so full of life just a couple of hours earlier. Israel's military blamed the strike on a 'malfunction' that caused a bomb targeting a militant to fall short and hit the children, and said it was examining the incident. Ashraf questioned this. 'They have the most advanced technology and know exactly where the missile will fall and who the target is. How could this be a mistake? A 'mistake' that killed both of my children!' The family couldn't afford a burial plot for the children, so they interred them beside Heba's father. They worry they may have to reopen the grave again for the youngest of their three surviving children if aid to civilians does not increase. At 18 months, Ghina is malnourished and has skin rashes because the family cannot afford nappies and don't have enough water to wash her. 'We sleep hungry and wake up hungry, and thirsty, too, with the desalination stations barely operating,' Heba said. 'The entire world sees everything, yet they close their eyes as if they don't.'
The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
When a teenage Lulu became the toast of Swinging London
Eventually, she and the band – rhythm guitarist James Dewar, lead guitarist Ross Nelson, drummer Dave Mullen, bassist Tommy Tierney and singer Alec Bell – drove down to London to audition for record companies. The first label, Columbia/EMI, declined, but the next one, Decca, offered them a record contract on the strength of two songs: Shout, a raucous number written by the Isley Brothers (Lulu had been blown away when she heard Alex Harvey singing it), and Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa, a Bacharach and David hit for Gene Pitney. After the band had recorded Shout, Marie's manager, Marian Massey, hit upon 'Lulu' as a new name for the 14-year-old, and Lulu and the Luvvers as the band's new name. The single was released by Decca in April 1964, by which time Lulu's name was everywhere. Fabulous magazine interviewed her, together with Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Cathy McGowan (host of TV's Ready, Steady, Go!), for a piece about pop's new female stars. Maureen Cleave interviewed her for the London Evening Standard; "When I sing I tingle all over and I can see the people's faces lighting up', Lulu told her. 'I'm so thrilled at it all; life's so thrilling." Shout spent 13 weeks on the charts, peaking at number seven. John Lennon, guesting with Paul McCartney on Ready Steady Go!, discussed the latest singles and declared that his favourite was Shout!, 'by a girl called Lulu'. That same year, after a gig in Glasgow in June 1964, Lulu invited The High Numbers – The Who, as they would shortly become – back to her old family home. She met the Rolling Stones, too. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote a song for her, called Surprise Surprise. It was released as a single early the following year, with a prolific session musician named Jimmy Page on guitar. Things were beginning to pick up speed. As Lulu recalls in her book I Don't Want to Fight, 'there were radio and TV appearances, magazine interviews, photo shoots and concerts … We appeared on TV shows like Thank Your Lucky Stars, Juke Box Jury and Ready, Steady, Go!, as well as performing on local radio and TV shows in England, Ireland and Wales'. The hit record saw the band increasing its fee for gigs from £30 to £100. And in a posh Knightsbridge restaurant, Bobby Darin, the American singer and actor, made her blush when he told her that she had been 'fabulous' on Ready, Steady, Go! The money began rolling in and Lulu's schedule had barely any gaps for rest and relaxation. She moved into a flat in St John's Wood owned by Marian's parents. And she certainly picked the right time to find herself in London. Even ahead of its coronation in April 1966 as 'The Swinging City', courtesy of Time magazine, it was a vibrant, adventurous place. Lulu and Rod Stewart at Glastonbury (Image: Yui Mok) "London was the centre of the world', Lulu writes in her book. 'Whether it was music, fashion, art, film, photography or design, the rest of the world was taking its lead from London. The streets were full of bright colours, short skirts, jackets without lapels, tight trousers, psychedelic swirls, platform shoes, Cuban-heeled boots and big hair. Pop music and rock'n'roll dominated the airwaves'. This is certainly a line echoed by Graham Nash in his memoir, Wild Tales. Describing the London of 1965, when he was still with the Hollies, he writes: "A full-scale cultural revolution was in progress, with youth and music dominating the scene, top to bottom. The boutiques on Carnaby Street catered to our lifestyle. Mary Quant was introducing miniskirts and Biba was around and Cecil Gee.... Darling and The Knack spoke to us from the screen, cynical and sexy and angry, and Radio Caroline was broadcasting off the coast". Read more: Lulu and her band were still in demand but their chart performance was sagging, causing her to worry that they might just be one-hit wonders. Two singles, Can't Hear You No More and Here Comes the Night (with Page again on guitar) made little impact, though Van Morrison's Them would have a number two hit with the latter song. It wasn't until Leave a Little Love reached number eight in June 1965 that Lulu felt that she had finally arrived. That September she gave a candid interview to Rave magazine, during which she admitted that she felt older than when she first came to London, and that the friends she used to know "suddenly seem worlds away from me. When we meet I am at a strange disadvantage". "My career is important to me," she added. "The first thing I think of when I wake up is, 'What is on today?' It may be TV or radio, or a live show somewhere. Whichever, I decide what to wear and whether to get my hair set. Sometimes my hairdresser, Vidal Sassoon, thinks I'm mad getting it re-set, because it looks O.K. But I feel awful if my hair isn't just right. I suppose when you are the instrument of your business you get self-centred in some ways. Anyhow, once I've sifted through the day, I relax, and things run smoothly enough." However, as Scots music historian Brian Hogg has noted, moves had long been afoot to prise Lulu from her 'backing' musicians, the Luvvers. TV slots for the singer alone, added Hogg, "already outnumbered those for the group as a whole. Although useful live, they were deemed superfluous in the studio where subsequent appearances were strictly limited'. This was illustrated by the line-up of musicians on Lulu's 1965 debut album, Something to Shout About; the Luvvers appeared on just three tracks, one of which was Shout. 'Lulu, with the Luvvers on some tracks, and a positively glittering showcase for her voice…', began an approving review in Record Mirror that October. The album's 16 tracks combined to show Lulu's sheer versatility as a vocalist beyond her gutsy performance on Shout. Try to Understand, Not in This Whole World, Tell Me Like It Is, and Holland-Dozier-Holland's Can I Get a Witness, previously a hit for Marvin Gaye, were among the highlights. As a calling card for a young woman in her teens, still relatively new to the recording business, it was pretty good. 'One of the most versatile voices on the scene', Record Mirror's review continued. 'Big bash for 'You Touch Me Baby', but the mood switches all the way. Main thing is the clarity of the punchiness Lulu injects all the way. A variety of backings, choral and instrumental, behind her. 'Can I Get a Witness' gets a brisk new reading. 'Shout' is in, of course, and Lulu's new single, 'Tell Me Like It Is'. 'Chocolate Ice' is a gas …. 'Leave A Little Love' is another stand-out. But then the overall standard is very high'. As Lulu notes in her book, the album had been successful, 'but session musicians had been used on some of the latest recordings. Although nothing had been said, I knew the boys were unhappy'. And there was also the undeniable fact that media attention had alighted on her, not on the boys in the band. Read more On the Record: James Dewar was first to leave the Luvvers, in 1965 – he went on to play with Stone the Crows and with the brilliant guitarist, Robin Trower. The other band members soon followed, retreating to Glasgow. 'I tried to hold us all together', Lulu recalls, 'but Decca had wanted this all along and did nothing to help me'. Her profile continued to rise. Magazine and newspaper writers sought her out. There was a groundbreaking package tour of Poland with the Hollies, and there were gigs in support of the Beach Boys in 1966. 'Lulu proved conclusively to me that she should be allowed to close the first half by virtue of the fact she is so beautifully professional', Keith Altham wrote in the NME after a Beach Boys/Lulu concert at the Finsbury Park Astoria in London. 'Five numbers from her were not enough — 'Blowing In The Wind', 'Wonderful Feeling' and 'Leave A Little Love' which Spencer Davis — who joined me to see the second house — was still raving about half an hour after the show, were her best numbers!' Lulu had also bought a car, and a townhouse in St John's Wood. At seventeen, she was 'hanging with the coolest, hippest crowd. Cynthia Lennon, Maureen Starkey and Pattie Boyd were my girlfriends'. In 1966 she had a role in a Sidney Poitier film, To Sir With Love, and the title song, sung by her, became a huge hit in the States in 1967, selling two million copies and sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks. Her sudden fame in the US led to an appearance on the top-rated Ed Sullivan Show. Media attention in Lulu was proving to be relentless. In November 1968 Disc and Music Echo caught up with her at her plush St John's Wood home, and the journalist was most taken with it all - the four-poster brass bed from Heal's, the pined kitchen, the huge pine chest housing a gigantic collection of albums, the small room that combined Lulu's office, [[TV]] room and general "flop out" space. "My house is my little refuge', Lulu told her. 'Whenever I get a moment I fly straight down to London and collapse inside its four walls!' * Lulu's latest book, If Only You Knew, is published on September 25. Dates for her series of 'intimate conversations with songs and stories' can be found on her website, lulu
The Guardian
4 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
Killing of young siblings at Gaza water point shows seeking life's essentials now a deadly peril
In Gaza, being a helpful, loving child can be a death sentence. Heba al-Ghussain's nine-year-old son, Karam, was killed by an Israeli airstrike because he went to fetch water for the family, and her 10-year-old daughter, Lulu, was killed because she went to give Karam a hand. The siblings were waiting beside a water distribution station, holding jerry cans and buckets, when it was bombed last Sunday, killing six children and four adults and injuring 19 others, mostly children. Both Lulu and Karam died instantly, torn apart by the force of the blast and so disfigured that their father prevented Heba from seeing their bodies. 'They didn't allow me to say goodbye or even look at them one last time,' she said. 'One of my brothers hugged me, trying to block the scene from me as he cried and tried to comfort me. After that, I don't remember anything. I lost touch with reality.' Lulu's real name was Lana but her parents rarely used it because her nickname, which means pearl, captured the gentle shine she brought to family life. 'She had such a joyful personality, and a heart full of kindness,' Heba said. Karam was smart, always top of his class until Israeli attacks shut down Gaza's schools, generous and mature beyond his years. His dad, Ashraf al-Ghussain, called him 'abu sharik' or 'my partner', because he seemed 'like a man in spirit'. But he was also enough of a child to be obsessed by a remote-controlled car that he begged his mother to buy. She regrets telling him they needed to save money for food. 'I wish I had spent everything I had to buy it for him so he could have played with it before he died.' Both children also dreamed of the day Israel would lift its blockade of Gaza, so they could taste chocolate, instant noodles and their mum's best dishes. For Lulu that was the Palestinian chicken dish musakhan, for Karam, shawarma. 'They had all kinds of food plans for me to prepare,' Heba said. Israel imposed a total siege for 11 weeks starting in March that brought Gaza to the brink of famine, and the very limited food, fuel and medical supplies allowed in since May have not relieved extreme hunger. Unprecedented malnutrition is killing children, and preventing injured people recovering, a British doctor working there said this week. Trying to get food has been a deadly gamble for months, with more than 800 people killed since late May in near daily attacks by Israeli soldiers using weapons including tank shells and navy cannon to target desperate crowds near food distribution points. Trying to get clean water is also a struggle. Nearly two years of Israeli attacks have destroyed water treatment plants and pipe networks. In June Unicef warned that Gaza faces a human-made drought and that without fuel to operate remaining stations children could start dying of thirst. But until Sunday, there had not been any mass killings of people trying to collect water. The al-Ghussains sent their children to collect supplies for the family because they thought it was less dangerous than searching for food. Aid groups brought water in trucks to fill tanks at a water distribution station just a few streets away from the school where the family sought shelter after their own home was bombed. Karam would wait there in the sweltering heat for his turn at taps that often ran dry. 'I had no choice but to send them,' Heba said. 'Many times, my son would go and wait for his turn, sometimes for an hour, only to end up with nothing because the water would run out before it reached everyone.' When he did get water, it was only 20 litres, very little for a family of seven but a heavy weight for a young boy. 'Karam was only nine years old and braver than dozens of men. He carried it without tiring or complaining.' The long queues meant that Heba was not too worried when she heard the water station was hit. Her son left home not long before the bombing, so she assumed he would still have been at the back of a waiting crowd, some distance from the blast. As it turned out the queue was relatively small when he arrived, a stroke of fatally bad luck that probably delighted Karam in his last few minutes. It meant that when the bomb hit, he and his sister were right beside water station. 'When Lulu woke up, I told her to go help her brother carry the water containers. It was as if the missile was waiting for her to arrive to strike that place,' Heba said. Ali Abu Zaid, 36, was one of the first on the scene, rushing to help survivors. As the dust and smoke cleared they revealed a horrific tableau. 'Each child was holding a water bucket, lying dead in place, covered in their own blood. The shrapnel had torn through their small bodies and disfigured their faces. The smell of gunpowder filled the area,' he said. People started loading the dead and injured on to donkey carts, as medical teams were slow to arrive, but there was nothing doctors could do for most of the victims. 'Even if the ambulances had got there sooner, it wouldn't have made a difference. There was no saving anyone, these were lifeless bodies, completely shattered.' Ashraf raced to look for his children as soon as he heard the blast, but arrived after their bodies had been taken away to find only blood-stained water containers scattered on the street, and a terrifying silence. So he headed to hospital to continue the search, where he found their battered bodies laid out on the floor, and collapsed over them in grief. He married in his 30s, late for Gaza, and when his children arrived they became his world. Karam and Lulu's brutal deaths have shattered him. 'When I saw them like that, I felt as if my heart was being stabbed with knives,' he said. 'I'm still in shock. I've become constantly afraid of losing the rest of my family and being left alone. I feel as if I'm going to lose my mind.' Heba also went to look for Lulu and Karam at the water station but then headed back to the shelter, hoping to find them waiting with their dad. Perhaps she had learned a kind of grim optimism from previous brushes with death. The siblings had been rescued from the rubble of their home when an airstrike brought it down on top of them earlier in the war, and survived injuries after another bomb hit nearby. That streak would not last. 'They survived twice, but not the third time,' Heba said. Word of the children's fate had reached the school, but even in Gaza, where no family has escaped tragedy, the scale of Heba's loss was shocking. 'The news of their martyrdom was already spreading, but no one told me,' she said. 'No one dared to deliver such terrible news.' Instead they encouraged her to go look for them among the injured in al-Awda hospital. There she found her husband, and the shattered bodies of their beloved son and daughter, so full of life just a couple of hours earlier. Israel's military blamed the strike on a 'malfunction' that caused a bomb targeting a militant to fall short and hit the children, and said it was examining the incident. Ashraf questioned this. 'They have the most advanced technology and know exactly where the missile will fall and who the target is. How could this be a mistake? A 'mistake' that killed both of my children!' The family couldn't afford a burial plot for the children, so they interred them beside Heba's father. They worry they may have to reopen the grave again for the youngest of their three surviving children if aid to civilians does not increase. At 18 months, Ghina is malnourished and has skin rashes because the family cannot afford nappies and don't have enough water to wash her. 'We sleep hungry and wake up hungry, and thirsty, too, with the desalination stations barely operating,' Heba said. 'The entire world sees everything, yet they close their eyes as if they don't.'
