The skies roared with Israeli fighter jets, pummeling Gaza City with bombs that lit the night and grayed the day in dust. Eman Abusaeid, her husband and their children were jolted out of sleep, their faces covered in debris from an Israeli airstrike on their neighbor’s home.
“Many of the buildings surrounding us have been bombed by F-16s. We’re trying to escape but don’t know where to go,” she said over the phone, two days into the war.
She spoke to NPR on Oct. 9, 2023, just two days after Hamas gunmen launched a stunning ambush on Israel. The full scale of that operation would be known weeks later as Israel combed through the burnt corpses and tested their DNA: Around 1,200 people had been killed; another 250 taken hostage.
The skies roared with Israeli fighter jets, pummeling Gaza City with bombs that lit the night and grayed the day in dust. Eman Abusaeid, her husband and their children were jolted out of sleep, their faces covered in debris from an Israeli airstrike on their neighbor’s home.
“Many of the buildings surrounding us have been bombed by F-16s. We’re trying to escape but don’t know where to go,” she said over the phone, two days into the war.
She spoke to NPR on Oct. 9, 2023, just two days after Hamas gunmen launched a stunning ambush on Israel. The full scale of that operation would be known weeks later as Israel combed through the burnt corpses and tested their DNA: Around 1,200 people had been killed; another 250 taken hostage.