'I don't have the words to express the pain we feel'

Bel Trew and Nedal Hamdouna recount the shocking stories of those who have lived, worked and died in the Gaza Strip

- Bel Trew and Nedal Hamdouna

Israel unleashed its heaviest-ever bombardment of Gaza and a siege last October after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages, according to Israeli estimates.

Since then, Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza has killed almost 42,000 people, the majority women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. A further 10,000 are thought to be under the rubble and an unknown number have been taken into Israeli detention. Swathes of Gaza have been razed to the ground.

The Independent spoke to those inside Gaza about what they have been through over the past year.

‘I lost 11 people from my family’

Ziad Abdul-Dayem, 55, is a paramedic and ambulance driver. In November he spent 12 hours dig ng through rubble, trying to rescue nearly a dozen members of his family killed in an Israeli airstrike. He risks his life working day and night to pull survivors from collapsed buildings.

Just a few minutes after Ziad, an ambulance driver, had dropped his son off at the house where they were sheltering, he received an emergency radio call: the area had been bombed.

His son, also a medic, had finished a punishing shift at a hospital in Gaza City, treating the massive influx of wounded from Israel’s offensive. Ziad, whose family had been displaced from northern Gaza, had taken him to get some rest at a flat in Jabalia refugee camp. The extended family was temporarily sheltering there. Since Ziad was the closest ambulance to the bomb site, it was his job to try to rescue survivors.

“The house was bombed along with four others. I was digging for my relatives for 12 hours straight. They were all under the rubble,” he tells The Independent in despair. “I lost 11 people from my family, including my son, my daughter’s husband, and their children. The pain and shock were indescribable.”