By Adnan El-BurshBBC ArabicFor about three months, Adnan El-Bursh reported on the war in Gaza while living in a tent, eating one meal a day, and struggling to keep his wife and five children safe. The BBC Arabic reporter shares the harrowing moments he faced covering a war that pushed him to his limits.Warning: This report contains descriptions and images some readers may find distressing One of the worst moments of the past six months was the night we all slept on the street. I looked at the faces of my wife and children, huddled in the bitter cold in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, and felt helpless.My 19-year-old twins, Zakia and Batoul, lay on the pavement alongside my daughter, Yumna, who is 14, my son Mohamed, who is eight and my youngest girl, Razan, aged five, with their mother, Zaynab.As we tried to rest outside the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s headquarters, the sounds of shelling echoed through the night and drones buzzed overhead.We had managed to find an apartment to rent, but the landlord had called earlier that day, saying the Israeli military had warned him the building would be bombed. I was working at the time, but my family grabbed their bags and fled.This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.We met up at the Red Crescent headquarters, which was already overflowing with displaced people.My brother and I sat on cardboard boxes all night, discussing what we should do.We had fled our homes in the town of Jabalia a few days earlier, on 13 October, leaving most of our possessions behind, after the Israeli military told everyone in northern Gaza to move south for safety.And now we had just escaped being bombed in the area we had been told to move to. It was hard to think straight. I felt angry, humiliated and terrible that I could not provide any protection for my family. Eventually, my family moved to an apartment in Nuseirat in central Gaza, while I stayed with the BBC team in a tent at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. I visited every few days.Communication was difficult, with internet and phone signals sometimes cut. Once I did not hear from my family for four or five days.In Khan Younis, the BBC team – about seven of us – lived on one meal a day. Even when there was food, sometimes we did not eat it because there was hardly anywhere to go to the toilet. During this time my friend, Al Jazeera bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, suffered a terrible loss.The house his family had been staying in was hit in an Israeli air strike. His wife, teenage son, seven-year-old daughter and one-year-old grandson were killed.The Israeli military says it takes “feasible precautions” to reduce civilian casualties, and in this case had “targeted Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the area”. Reporting Gaza: My WarIn Gaza, Palestinian journalists document the war as they live it on a daily basis. In this BBC World Service film, we hear the story of BBC Arabic’s Reporter in Gaza, Adnan El-Bursh who found himself reporting the news, as he was living through it.Watch now on BBC iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC World Service YouTube channel (outside UK) I watched the footage of my friend, who I have known for 20 years, embracing his children’s shroud-wrapped bodies in central Gaza. I wished I was there with him.The news came amid a string of reports about the deaths of other friends, relatives and neighbours. My heart ached. I have now lost about 200 people in the war.That day I wept live on air, as I was reporting. In the night, I woke up with tears covering my cheeks. Wael’s image never left my mind. I have covered conflicts in Gaza for 15 years, but this war stands apart, from the unprecedented attack that triggered it, to the scale of the losses.At 06:15 on 7 October I was woken by loud explosions and my children screaming. I went up to the rooftop and saw rockets being launched towards Israel from Gaza.When we realised Hamas had breached the fence into Israel – in its assault that saw about 1,200 people killed and 250 taken hostage – we knew the response from Israel would be like nothing we had seen before.More than 34,000 people have now been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The risk of injury and death has been ever-present.Two days into the war, I hurried to our local market in Jabalia, to stock up with food. It was busy with others doing the same.But the area was bombed heavily just 10 minutes after I left. The entire place was destroyed, including the large grocery store where I had shopped moments earlier.I knew the faces of the shop owners. Many of them were among the dead. Amnesty International says at least 69 people were killed in the attack …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn By Adnan El-BurshBBC ArabicFor about three months, Adnan El-Bursh reported on the war in Gaza while living in a tent, eating one meal a day, and struggling to keep his wife and five children safe. The BBC Arabic reporter shares the harrowing moments he faced covering a war that pushed him to his limits.Warning: This report contains descriptions and images some readers may find distressing One of the worst moments of the past six months was the night we all slept on the street. I looked at the faces of my wife and children, huddled in the bitter cold in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, and felt helpless.My 19-year-old twins, Zakia and Batoul, lay on the pavement alongside my daughter, Yumna, who is 14, my son Mohamed, who is eight and my youngest girl, Razan, aged five, with their mother, Zaynab.As we tried to rest outside the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s headquarters, the sounds of shelling echoed through the night and drones buzzed overhead.We had managed to find an apartment to rent, but the landlord had called earlier that day, saying the Israeli military had warned him the building would be bombed. I was working at the time, but my family grabbed their bags and fled.This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.We met up at the Red Crescent headquarters, which was already overflowing with displaced people.My brother and I sat on cardboard boxes all night, discussing what we should do.We had fled our homes in the town of Jabalia a few days earlier, on 13 October, leaving most of our possessions behind, after the Israeli military told everyone in northern Gaza to move south for safety.And now we had just escaped being bombed in the area we had been told to move to. It was hard to think straight. I felt angry, humiliated and terrible that I could not provide any protection for my family. Eventually, my family moved to an apartment in Nuseirat in central Gaza, while I stayed with the BBC team in a tent at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis. I visited every few days.Communication was difficult, with internet and phone signals sometimes cut. Once I did not hear from my family for four or five days.In Khan Younis, the BBC team – about seven of us – lived on one meal a day. Even when there was food, sometimes we did not eat it because there was hardly anywhere to go to the toilet. During this time my friend, Al Jazeera bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, suffered a terrible loss.The house his family had been staying in was hit in an Israeli air strike. His wife, teenage son, seven-year-old daughter and one-year-old grandson were killed.The Israeli military says it takes “feasible precautions” to reduce civilian casualties, and in this case had “targeted Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the area”. Reporting Gaza: My WarIn Gaza, Palestinian journalists document the war as they live it on a daily basis. In this BBC World Service film, we hear the story of BBC Arabic’s Reporter in Gaza, Adnan El-Bursh who found himself reporting the news, as he was living through it.Watch now on BBC iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC World Service YouTube channel (outside UK) I watched the footage of my friend, who I have known for 20 years, embracing his children’s shroud-wrapped bodies in central Gaza. I wished I was there with him.The news came amid a string of reports about the deaths of other friends, relatives and neighbours. My heart ached. I have now lost about 200 people in the war.That day I wept live on air, as I was reporting. In the night, I woke up with tears covering my cheeks. Wael’s image never left my mind. I have covered conflicts in Gaza for 15 years, but this war stands apart, from the unprecedented attack that triggered it, to the scale of the losses.At 06:15 on 7 October I was woken by loud explosions and my children screaming. I went up to the rooftop and saw rockets being launched towards Israel from Gaza.When we realised Hamas had breached the fence into Israel – in its assault that saw about 1,200 people killed and 250 taken hostage – we knew the response from Israel would be like nothing we had seen before.More than 34,000 people have now been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The risk of injury and death has been ever-present.Two days into the war, I hurried to our local market in Jabalia, to stock up with food. It was busy with others doing the same.But the area was bombed heavily just 10 minutes after I left. The entire place was destroyed, including the large grocery store where I had shopped moments earlier.I knew the faces of the shop owners. Many of them were among the dead. Amnesty International says at least 69 people were killed in the attack …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
