around the school, and children were now venturing outside. Many had stories to tell and felt unsafe - even at the UN compound.

In a first floor room a young boy told of how his uncle had bled to death. They called for the man's widow and Ghalia Abu Hussein appeared, her face covered with a veil, struggling along with her children. She said that her husband was a telecommunications worker and that he was an innocent victim.

She agreed to take me to her home, ten minutes drive from the school.

At the house she took me up the stairs to the first floor where Israelis had, she claimed, fired missiles through the front of the building, hitting her husband in the head as he looked out the window. Hisshoes lay in the rubble. Abu Hussein said: "My husband just went to look out the window to see what was going on. He had refused to leave the house. Then they shot him in the head.

"I had to flee with the children. There was nothing we could do. He bled to death because the ambulances couldn't reach the house." At the bottom of the stairs one of her daughters was sobbing quietly as the constant whine of an Israeli drone hovered overhead.

"Listen to those drones - and they talk about a ceasefire," her mother said, as she launched into a bitter and angry verbal assault about the "crimes" Israel has committed against the residents of Rafah.