Credit, personnel file
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Abdelhakim near the ruins of his home in Al Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza
Item information
- Author: Lara El Gibaly and Harriet Orrell
- Scroll, BBC World Service
November 14, 2023
Four people living in Gaza recorded their lives for the BBC World Service. They described long days searching for food and water and spending long nights seeking shelter from air raids and praying to stay alive until the next morning.
Israeli forces have been bombarding the Gaza Strip since October 7 and have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians since then, according to the Hamasrun Health Ministry. The offensive on Palestinian territory is in retaliation for the Hamas attack on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people and took more than 200 hostage.
Unstable phone networks and communication outages made contact difficult, but our sources Adam, Abdelhakim, Farida and Khalid sent messages and videos whenever they could.
Warning: This text contains graphic descriptions of scenes that may be disturbing to some people.
Friday, October 13th
Israeli planes are dropping leaflets urging residents of the northern Gaza Strip to leave their homes and fly south for their own “safety and protection” ahead of an impending ground invasion.
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Farida lives in Gaza City her house was destroyed in the war
Farida: Farida is a 26yearold English teacher living in Gaza City.
“Three of my neighbors’ houses are now destroyed. We all have to escape, but we have nowhere to go,” she says in her first message. “We’re just waiting. Several of my friends are missing, possibly dead. I don’t know anything about my parents.”
She sets off south on foot with her siblings and six small children. They hike for almost a week and sleep on the streets. The goal is to move beyond Wadi Gaza into the area Israel considers safe.
Adam: That same day, in the southern town of Khan Younis, Adam, a young worker, prepares to give up everything and run away for the fifth time in five days.
“More than a million people from northern Gaza have been invited to travel south, particularly to Khan Younis,” he says. “But Khan Younis is under airstrikes. One of them was very close to my house.”
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Adam slept in schools and hospitals
Stocks of food, medicine and gasoline have dwindled after Israel placed a full siege on the Gaza Strip. Adam does not have access to the care he needs for his elderly father, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease. They can’t find a bed for him in the hospital either. The night before they slept on the floor in the hospital yard.
Khalid: Khalid, a medical equipment supplier who lives in Jabalia, north of Gaza, refuses to flee with his family despite leaflets advising him to do so.
“Where would we go?” No place is safe, no exceptions. We will be dead anyway,” he says in a video message, the sound of exploding bombs can be heard in the background. Khalid looks after his cousin’s two small children. The children survived an attack on a neighborhood market.
“Due to the large number of injured people, there is a serious lack of medical care,” he reports. “Some medicines need to be kept at low temperatures, but due to power outages, they spoiled. We urgently need these items.”
Khalid says he has not been able to deliver medical supplies since the war began.
Monday, October 16th
A vehicle convoy carrying civilians traveling south on the Salah alDin road, one of two evacuation routes, is hit. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 70 people are killed, most of them women and children. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) denies any involvement. So far 2,785 Palestinians have been killed.
As attacks continue in the south, more and more Palestinians are choosing to remain in their homes in the north. Others who seek protection in the south decide to return.
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Children’s motorcycle next to rubble caused by the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza
Farida: After sleeping on the streets for days, Farida is devastated.
“I don’t have the words to describe how I’m feeling or what’s happening,” she says. “There are a lot of bombings around us and all the children are crying. We don’t know where to go.
“In Gaza, every night you don’t know whether you’ll wake up or not. I just sit with my family and wear my hijab. I have to prepare for possible air strikes.”
Tuesday, October 17th
An explosion at AlAhli Hospital in Gaza City kills 471 people. Among the dead were women and children who sought shelter in the hospital courtyard. Israel says it had no involvement and that the explosion was caused by a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket.
Abdelhakim: A few months before the start of the war, Abdelhakim completed training as a software engineer. He lives in the Al Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. He says several of his friends were at the scene of the hospital explosion. One was injured while another lost his entire family.
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Abdelhakim graduated a few months before the war began and now helps distribute humanitarian aid
“I’m 23 years old and still alive,” he says in a video filmed by torchlight. “I don’t know if my story will be told in my lifetime. I could be killed by planes.”
“We have no water, no medicine, no electricity, no basic food. I haven’t eaten anything in three days, except for a small slice of bread that my brothers and I shared. My family and I didn’t sleep for more than ten hours in 12 days. We are very tired. We can’t rest because we worry too much.”
Abdelhakim and other volunteers distribute donations at her home.
“We are preparing aid packages and blankets. Even the children help. We decided to take the initiative instead of waiting for aid trucks from Egypt,” he explains.
Friday, October 20th
Abdelhakim’s home was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike and he uploads a video of the collapsed building. Frantic screams can be heard in the background as the family struggles to escape.
Abdelhakim: “We were sitting there and suddenly we were hit by rockets. We barely left the house. Our neighbors are still under the rubble,” he says.
“We looked for them, but we didn’t find anyone. We live every minute and every hour surrounded by death.”
“My family and I are alive miraculously. We need to repair part of our house so we can stay here and wait for death.”
Wednesday, October 25th
The neighborhood where Abdelhakim lives is hit by another airstrike. So far 6,972 Palestinians have been killed.
Abdelhakim: This time all he can do is send a tearful voicemail and a few text messages saying: “I couldn’t do anything to help, I was paralyzed seeing body parts everywhere. No one here is safe, we are all martyrs in the making.”
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid were allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, but the supplies they were carrying were far from enough for Gaza’s displaced population the UN estimates that more than 1.4 million people had to leave their homes.
Adam: The struggle to find food for the family is a constant burden on him: “I have to get up very early to get food without standing in a long line. The situation is getting worse and worse.”
“When you sleep in the schoolyard, something inside you breaks. And when you sleep in a hospital yard, something else inside you breaks. When you stand in line for bread and beg for water, many things within you break.”
Khalid: “They constantly bombard us and we don’t know how to go out to buy bread. There is no refrigerator to store food. We eat spoiled food, rotten tomatoes. Insects hatch in cauliflower. We have no choice.” But to eat them, why not, there is nothing left. We have to remove the mold and eat what we have.”
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Khalid and his family remove mold and bugs from their food and eat it
Farida: The family decides to return to their home in the north.
“We have no shelter in the south and have not been able to meet basic needs. The bombs were very heavy where we were. We decided to return home to at least maintain our dignity,” she says.
“We were so happy to have a place to sit and connect with friends and family, even if it was just four or five minutes a day.”
Shortly after their return, their street is bombed and part of their house is damaged.
Friday, October 27th
Internet and telephone services are completely disrupted in Gaza, resulting in a total communications blockade for 48 hours as Israel intensifies its ground operations. We cannot communicate with Adam, Abdelhakim, Farida and Khalid. When communication networks return, they describe days of darkness.
Abdelhakim: “There was heavy shelling last night. There is no way to communicate and ambulances cannot come and pick people up, so anyone who is bombed dies instantly.”
Adam: “I’m fine, thank God. But while communications were lost, my father died. Rest in peace. I was completely powerless in that moment to even call the people closest to me so they could be by my side, or even tell them what happened.
Farida: “I lost my friend and my house was destroyed,” she says through tears. “My brother was injured. The pain destroys my heart. We’re not doing well, we’re completely destroyed.”
Khalid: “The day seemed normal, but when the internet came back we got the news. Houses and entire blocks were destroyed. Entire families were killed. The situation is tragic. They isolated us from the world and then the massacres began.”
Monday, October 30th
Israeli tanks approach Gaza City and are seen on Salah alDin Street.
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Khalid refused to flee the northern Gaza Strip
Khalid: “I do not go. Now we think, ‘Oh God, when is the next bomb going to drop so we can die and rest?'”
We lost contact with Khalid after an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia, where he lives, on October 31st. At least 101 people died and 382 were injured, according to a Palestinian health official. Israel says it targeted a senior Hamas commander, not civilians. The country accuses the group, which is classified as terrorist by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, among others, of hiding its members in civilian areas.
Farida: “I have dreams. I have great family and friends. I had a great life. I always think, ‘If we die, no one will know what’s going on.’ Please write down everything I say. I want to tell the world my story because I’m not a number.
Adam: “I want you to tell this whole story so it can be documented so the world will forever be ashamed that this is happening to us.”
UN experts warn that time is running out to prevent a “genocide” in Gaza.
In the first four weeks of the war, more than 10,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, were killed, according to the Hamasrun health ministry. More than 4,000 of them were children.
Update: Saturday November 11th
After 10 days of silence, Khalid speaks out again. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 36 health facilities, including 22 hospitals, have been damaged since the war began on October 7 and few are still functioning.
Khalid: “I have come a long way to get a signal that lets me know I am still alive, as I am in an area without internet, water or electricity.”
“We dared to deliver relief supplies to the children’s hospital in Rantisi [no norte da Cidade de Gaza]We stay just a few meters away from the tanks and risk our lives. There is not an inch, including hallways and stairs, that is not occupied by a patient.”
“The hospital ran out of medical supplies. Infant milk is not available for children. Doctors perform operations without anesthesia.”
“The people of northern Gaza were sentenced to death. We are being systematically exterminated. Those who do not die from the bombing will die of disease. And those who don’t die from disease will probably die from lack of food and water.”
The IDF later released to the BBC details of telephone conversations between a Rantisi Hospital official and a senior IDF officer in which options for organizing ambulances to evacuate patients were discussed.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari also shows journalists what he says is evidence of Hamas infrastructure at Rantisi Hospital a video showing explosives, suicide vests and a motorcycle hidden in a basement used in the January 7 Hamas attacks October was used.
Hagari shows a video of a deep well with a side staircase that he says is near a school and a hospital, adding that it is a “tunnel of terror.” The BBC was unable to verify this information.
*Numbers of people killed in Gaza are provided by the Hamasrun Ministry of Health.
Additional reporting by Haya Al Badarneh and Mary O’Reilly