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The next day, while photographing the funeral of a medic\u2019s family at Al-Shifa Hospital, Ali overheard a conversation about an airstrike that had struck the neighborhood of Sheikh Ridwan, where generations of his family lived across multiple buildings. He ran to his car and drove straight home.<\/p>\n
When he arrived, he found his father\u2019s apartment building had been flattened by an airstrike, and his parents, siblings and extended family were trapped in the rubble. Rescue workers and residents were searching for survivors with makeshift tools unfit for the scale of the damage.<\/p>\n
I met Ali, 33, on several reporting trips to Gaza, and he recounted what he witnessed in a phone interview with me on Thursday. Over his nearly 15 years as a war reporter, he has covered almost every major deadly escalation of violence on the enclave. He has photographed images that have become synonymous with Gaza: piles of rubble, corpses, grieving relatives\u2019 despairing faces, funerals.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, however, he stood without a camera, filled with desperation.<\/p>\n
Years of experience taught Ali that if there was a slim chance to find survivors, the rescuers would need to listen for their cries. He asked them for silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stuck my head into the opening and started asking: \u2018Is anyone in there? Is anyone alive? If there is anyone, try to shout,\u2019\u201d Ali said.<\/p>\n
A voice broke through. \u201cI heard my mother saying, \u2018Yes, yes,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As rescuers dug out the rubble around his mother, Ali clasped her blackened hand and kissed it repeatedly, begging her to stay alive. He placed an oxygen mask over her mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here with you,\u201d he told her. \u201cYou just need to breath and pray.\u201d He covered her eyes to block out dust. Video posted to social media showed him crouching over her.<\/p>\n
His mother, Hayat Jadallah, survived, but the airstrike killed nearly every other member of his family.<\/p>\n
From the debris, Ali and the rescuers pulled the bodies of his three brothers: Salah and Khaled, 27-year-old twins, who ran an online business; and Saleh, 20, a university student. Four of Ali\u2019s female first cousins were also killed.<\/p>\nSalah and Khaled Jadallah, 27-year-old twins, were killed when their home was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. Their sister, Duaa Jadallah, 29, was trapped under the rubble and presumed dead.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Courtesy of Doaa Elasawi<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHis retired father, Hassan Jadallah, and his 29-year-old sister, Duaa Jadallah, a medical worker, remained trapped under the rubble and were presumed dead. On Thursday, Ali was still searching, but the mass of twisted concrete seemed impenetrable, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur arms hurt, and the hammers broke in vain,\u201d he said. \u201cNo matter how much we dug, we removed one obstacle, only to find two more.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces did not confirm on Thursday whether it had targeted the apartment building, in the Sheikh Ridwan district of Gaza City, offering instead a brief statement that said, \u201cWe\u2019re at war.\u201d<\/p>\n
But videos posted to social media, along with satellite imagery reviewed by The New York Times, confirm that a building in the neighborhood was completely destroyed on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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Saleh Jadallah, 20, was also killed in the destruction of the building.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Courtesy of Doaa Elasawi<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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The father of all four siblings, Hassan Jadallah, was presumed dead.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Courtesy of Doaa Elasawi<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nIsrael continues to pound Gaza with airstrikes in retaliation for coordinated Hamas attacks on Saturday that left more than 1,200 victims dead.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Gaza\u2019s Health Ministry reported that more than 1,500 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli bombardments since Saturday, including 500 children, and that more than 6,600 people had been wounded, including more than 1,600 children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis war is different; they aren\u2019t calling you to tell you to stay away from a certain area or ask you to evacuate the office,\u201d Ali said. \u201cNo, they are telling you to evacuate an entire block and they keep bombing that block. Anything that\u2019s alive, they are destroying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ali\u2019s mother suffered injuries to her pelvis, right leg, her face and palms. She does not know that her other children, husband and other relatives were killed. Ali has not been able to tell her.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Ali lifted the bodies of his relatives onto the back of a truck. In keeping with Islamic tradition, they were all wrapped in simple white cloths.<\/p>\n
For the second time in less than 24 hours, Ali attended the funeral of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombardments in Gaza. But this time, he took no photographs.<\/p>\n
Malachy Browne, Wissam Nassar and Abeer Pamuk contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n