‘Families want to die together’: relatives count the cost of Gaza airstrikes

As Israeli missiles rain down on crowded apartment blocks, survivors are left numb as entire family groups are wiped out

The first call informing Fares Alghoul that a relative’s home had been hit by an Israeli airstrike arrived late on a Friday. The internet in Gaza was cut only moments later, forcing him to wait 12 hours to learn the names of the 18 dead. He would have to wait even longer for the confirmation that a further 18 family members stuck under the rubble had also been killed, bringing his family’s death toll to 36.

As a journalist, Alghoul has covered all Gaza’s previous wars but now lives in Canada, where he has had to watch from a distance as generations of his family are wiped out.