The wife of Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf has said her parents are “terrified” after they became trapped in Gaza following a trip to visit their relatives in the besieged enclave.
Nadia El-Nakla said in an interview with the BBC’s Reporting Scotland on Wednesday, that her parents, Elizabeth and Maged, tell her “they feel like they are going to die”.
The El-Naklas travelled to Gaza last week to visit an elderly relative and Nadia’s brother, who works as a doctor in Gaza.
On Saturday, Hamas, an armed group in Gaza, attacked Israel, prompting fighting that has killed more than 1,300 people on each side.
On Wednesday, Gaza’s sole power plant ran out of fuel and shut down after Israel’s decision to cut off supplies.
In a video clip played as part of the BBC interview, Elizabeth said: “We’ve no electricity, we’ve no water, the food we do have, which is little, will not last because there is no electric and it will spoil.”
A visibly emotional Nadia told the BBC it was “incredibly difficult right now”.
“I don’t know what it means for them in the long-term, I don’t know what’s about to happen to them. For me, my number one is my family being safe.”
Nadia said her parents are talking about saving their phone batteries due to the lack of power, which means they are having to limit contact.
“Every few hours I’m seeing things, and I’m calling my parents. But now we are talking about having to preserve their battery on their phone. We cannot keep talking to them because there’s no electricity,” she said.
“We’ve taken numbers of neighbours, they’ve written down all of our numbers. If I can’t get in touch with them, can I contact a neighbour to find out if they’re still alive?
“These are conversations we need to have. At times, my arms just feel like lead. It feels like I am just living in a nightmare. For them, I just can’t understand how they feel.”
On Tuesday, Humza Yousaf wrote to British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, urging him to call on Israel to open a humanitarian corridor.
“I am writing concerning the horrific terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas over the weekend, and the escalating conflict in Israel and Gaza,” he wrote.
“Too many innocent people have already lost their lives as a consequence of these completely unjustifiable and illegitimate attacks by Hamas,” Yousaf added.
“However, innocent men, women and children cannot, and should not, pay the price for the actions of a terrorist group. Collective punishment of innocent civilians cannot be justified and will do nothing to set the conditions for peace in the region,” he said.
