Tributes have poured in from across the globe for 19-year-old Sha’ban al-Dalou, a software engineering student who burned to death after Israel bombed Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah on Monday. Photographs and footage of his final moments shocked millions around the world as Sha’ban laid in a hospital bed with an IV attached to his arm as the flames engulfed him. His mother and youngest brother have also reportedly succumbed to their burns, and his two sisters are on the verge of dying from their injuries. “Another family is going to be wiped off the civil record,” says Abubaker Abed, a 21-year-old journalist reporting live from outside the Al-Aqsa Hospital who interviewed al-Dalou’s family and friends. Abed once dreamed of becoming a football commentator and is struggling to find food and supplies while Israel enacts a near-complete siege on Gaza. “We are young men that have nothing to do with this war. … But we are very daily being subjected to sheer violence and brutality,” says Abed. “I could be the next Sha’ban. Anyone could be the next Sha’ban, because Israel is allowed to do anything.”
