Humza Yousaf’s family have six bottles of clean water left to share among 100 people and fear they won’t make it through the night, the Scottish first minister has said.
Elizabeth El-Nakla and her husband, Maged, the parents of Yousaf’s wife Nadia, travelled to Gaza before the hostilities flared up to visit family earlier this month. They are trapped amid the Israeli airstrikes and border closures.
During a visit to the flood-hit town of Brechin, Angus, on Monday, Yousaf could be seen speaking on the phone and walking away from his advisers to take the call, which was later revealed to be from his mother-in-law.
The first minister said: “They’re really living in a situation that my mother-in-law describes as torture.
“The whole night there will be missiles, rocket fire, drones — they don’t know whether they are going to make it from one night to the next. They’re down to six bottles of clean drinking water in a house of 100 people, including a two-month-old baby.”
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Yousaf went on to urge the government to use its influence as an ally of Israel to “demand” the Rafah border crossing in the south of the Gaza Strip be opened for those who want to leave and for more aid to be brought into the country.
He said: “She’s asking me, she’s pleading with me, and I’m pleading with the UK government, not to just ask for the border to be opened, but to demand that the Rafah crossing is opened and there’s a ceasefire right now.
“Because above and beyond my mother-in-law and father-in-law, there’s 2.2 million people in Gaza.
“The vast majority are innocent men, women and children, nothing to do with Hamas or their terrible terrorist atrocities, who are suffering. Every single one of us has seen the images, we’ve all seen the pictures, we’re all heartbroken and yet there is no ceasefire.
“People who want to leave should be allowed to leave, and we need far more aid than a trickle of 15 or 20 trucks going in every single day, so I hope the international community will step up their efforts to help the innocent people of Gaza.”
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Nadia El-Nakla said that her two-year-old cousin was struck with shrapnel after the family’s home in Gaza was “hit by a drone”.
El-Nakla told Times Radio that her mother called her to say that her aunt, uncle and their three children were struck by a drone while sitting outside their house.
She said: “I just got a call actually to say that my aunt was sitting with her family and a missile from a drone hit beside them, and my little two-year-old cousin’s got shrapnel on her skin.
“So they’ve [gone] to my parents’ house, and they are trying to calm them down, and to remove the shrapnel, a few of them are covered in it. But they are just little two-year-olds, and the thought of her covered in shrapnel is very upsetting.”
