On 15 October 2023, a week after Israel’s devastating assault on the Gaza Strip began, Hafez Jameel al-Masri went to his apartment in west Rafah to take a shower.
“I turned on the shower, and the water fell on my body,” recounts the 28-year-old from an apartment in the Egyptian capital, Cairo. “All I know after that is that I ended up under the rubble. I woke up when I was still buried.”
All of Masri’s immediate 13 family members were killed in the Israeli airstrike that day. Four of his nephews survived because they were not in the house at the time. However, one of them still sustained critical injuries from the impact of the blast, which reached surrounding homes.
When Masri was dug out from the debris, he was informed that he was the sole survivor from the airstrike on his family’s home.
“It was a huge shock,” Masri told The Electronic Intifada. “It took me one month to actually process and accept what had happened. My father and mother were everything to me. But now my parents, my six brothers and sisters and all of their children don’t exist anymore.”
More than 37,500 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October. Many human rights observers say Israel’s unprecedented aggression in Gaza amounts to genocide…..more
