When Musheir El-Farra climbs into bed in Gaza each night, he cannot get the sounds of people screaming out of his head.
Since last week, the British civil engineer has been plagued by memories of an Israeli bomb attack on a residential block in Khan Younis in which, he said, 16 of his relatives were killed.
“Every time I go to bed I can see them, and I’m saying to myself: ‘Is there going to be more?’ Every night. Every night I can hear those screams, those wails,” he said.
El-Farra said the “massacre” was 10 metres from the house he was sheltering in, and that he now knows more than 100 people who have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its aerial bombardment and ground operation.
Describing the aftermath of the attack in the early hours of the morning last Tuesday, he said: “I saw the body of my beloved cousin, a boy I’ve loved since he was a kid, called Hatim, in front of me, on his back, with his backside exposed and we put a blanket on him.
“I saw the body of his son who was thrown from the third floor into the back yard in front of our house. I saw the body of two of the babies who were killed in that massacre.
“I saw an old woman who was severely injured being carried by our relatives. I saw them all being taken to ambulances and I saw mutilated bodies. I saw all this at a metre’s distance.
“To be honest I’m really worried about PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] when I go back to Britain – if I go back to Britain.”
El-Farra, 62, who grew up in Gaza and now lives in Sheffield, is among the 200 British or dual nationals in the Palestinian territory. More than 8,000 people in the strip have been killed, according to the Gaza health ministry, since Hamas’s brutal attacks in Israel on 7 October. Hamas militants rampaged through southern Israel, killing 1,400 people and taking 230 hostages.
On Sunday, El-Farra and his nephew Mohammed Ghalayini, a civil servant from Manchester who is also trapped in Khan Younis, were able to reassure their loved ones of their safety after the lifting of a 36-hour near-total communications blackout imposed by Israel.
“It was very scary to be cut off like that, to feel like you really, truly have no voice while you’re undergoing this onslaught from the Israeli army,” said Ghalayini, 44.
But the bombardment has not eased. “A couple of minutes before you called the house really shook like an earthquake, like it swayed from side to side for a second,” he said on Sunday evening.
“It’s all around you. You can’t walk anywhere without seeing some signs of bombing, whether it’s buildings or debris or cars that have windows shattered or massive dents or people, the walking wounded, walking around with bandages on their heads or with broken limbs and it’s like, wow, these are people that have just escaped from bombing.”
Ghalayini and El-Farra, who is chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Sheffield, said they had no power and struggled to charge their phones, and that water and food was scarce, with 12-hour queues to buy bread.
El-Farra, who is sheltering in a three-storey block with his UK-born son Qasem, 21, and four other families, added that it was shocking to see evacuees from northern Gaza sleeping on cardboard boxes on pavements in the centre of Khan Younis.
He has been documenting on social media the horrors of Israel’s bombardment, which he described as “collective punishment on a massive, massive scale [and] a war crime under international law”.
But he was keen to stress that there had been some glimpses of hope amid the brutality. “It’s unbelievable; we get bombed one night and the following day the market and the high street and people are trying to get back to life,” he said.
“I have seen people going into bird supplies shops and buying food for their birds. I took a video and I was crying because this is a great sign, like how on earth in an area which has been bombed people think of their birds and shops open for the people.”
He added that this was also evidence that Palestinians had become somewhat immune to such suffering. “I am sad for how they’re not feeling the pain as much as they do because they are used to it, although this is the most vicious attack according to everybody,” El-Farra said.
“But I’m proud as well because this is a sign of strength – although it shouldn’t be, human beings should be scared and people are scared, terrified – but there’s a sense of togetherness and strength and that’s fantastic.”
Despite their fears for their safety, Ghalayini and El-Farra said they had considered staying in Gaza to help with the relief effort.
Ghalayini, who was born in Saudi Arabia but moved to the UK when he was a one-year-old, said: “I’m a skilled individual, I’m organised, I’m fluent in English and articulate. I can be a voice, I can be a witness, I can help people get through this. Civilians in war are seen as victims, but I’m not a victim. I am someone who wants to support the community through this.”
El-Farra added: “I’m among my people, and what affects them, affects me and I feel that, even if I leave, my heart will be bleeding for the people left behind.”
