‘We fear Gaza will be forgotten’

Despair grows as focus turns away

- Bethan McKernan

As Israeli bombs began to fall across Lebanon, the scenes of bloodshed and chaos were grimly familiar to the people of Gaza.

Mai al-Afifa, 24, was teaching a workshop about how to identify unexploded ordnance in a school turned shelter in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah on Thursday when an Israeli missile hit the next building in the compound. It killed 28 people and left 54 injured, according to medics at the scene.

Through the smoke and dust Afifa saw the body parts of two women and a male aid worker as she stumbled to safety. The Israeli military said it had carried out a precise strike to target Hamas fighters using the school as a command centre.

“We are very sad about what is happening now in Lebanon … We have experienced this pain and loss,” she said. “But we also fear that Gaza will be forgotten: the massacres have increased here and no one is talking about it. All the TV channels are talking about the regional war, Iran, Israel and what is happening in Lebanon.”

Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon at the beginning of October after two weeks of heavy airstrikes and targeted assassinations aimed at destroying Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities.

The powerful, Iran-allied Lebanese militia began firing on Israel the day after Hamas’s 7 October attack that triggered the new war, ostensibly in solidarity with the Palestinian group. Tit-for-tat cross-border fire over the last year has displaced hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the blue line.