On Tuesday afternoon, 25-year-old Hanadi Ahmed brought her two young children, Mohammed, 6, and Haya, 4, to visit her aunt in a tent camp in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of central Gaza City. Just minutes after she arrived, an Israeli airstrike targeted the encampment — the missile landing barely meters away from Hanadi and her family.

Six people were killed in the strike, including three children, and dozens more were wounded. “They were making tea on the fire when the strike hit,” said Ryad, 33, Hanadi’s brother-in-law. “Shrapnel from the missile injured Hanadi and her aunt.”

Ryad and Hanadi’s husband, Ahmed, were sitting outside their home in eastern Gaza City when they received a call: a stranger had found Hanadi’s phone on the ground and randomly dialed a contact to report the attack.

A neighbor offered to drive them to the site in his bus. When they arrived, witnesses told them the wounded had been rushed to Al-Shifa Hospital on a horse cart.

“We found her lying on the ground [in the hospital’s corridors], bleeding.” Ryad told +972 Magazine. “There weren’t enough hospital beds. It took 20 minutes before doctors could examine her. Her body was full of shrapnel. One piece shattered the bone in her left leg bone; another had penetrated near her heart and exited through her back.”

As talk of a possible ceasefire in Gaza between Hamas and Israel sparks cautious hope, the reality on the ground couldn’t be more brutal, with over 660 Palestinians killed and 2800 injured in the first nine days of this month. Relentless Israeli airstrikes, some of the deadliest since the war began and most without any warning, are hitting densely populated areas — families waiting in line at food distribution centers, people sheltering in tents, schools, clinics, and even coffee shops.

In addition to those in Al-Rimal, the Israeli army had killed 89 Palestinians across the Strip by the end of Tuesday, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Just yesterday morning, at least 16 Gazans — including 10 children and two women — were killed and dozens injured by an Israeli airstrike while they were waiting to receive nutritional supplements at a medical clinic in Deir Al Balah. The IDF Spokesperson claimed that the attack targeted a “terrorist who infiltrated Israel during the brutal October 7 massacre,” and that the army “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals.”

Hatem Al-Nouri, 41, a resident of Deir Al-Balah, lost his sons Omar (8) and Amir (4) in the strike. As he explained to +972, he was still asleep when they had left home to go to the clinic with their youngest brother, Siraj (2). “I heard the sound of shelling, and my wife screamed at me, ‘My children, my children!’” he recalled. “I ran out like a madman, and found my children on a donkey cart [outside the clinic]. Amir had already died; Omar was bleeding and breathing, but he quickly died. Siraj suffered a severe head injury and is in intensive care.

“I don’t know how we will live,” he continued. “There is no life left in our house. I still can’t believe what happened to me, as if I’m in a nightmare.”

Meanwhile, at Al-Shifa, doctors had ordered a CT scan for Hanadi, but due to the collapse of Gaza’s health system no machines were readily available. She had to be transferred to Al-Ahli Hospital, wait three hours to get the scan, and then returned to Al-Shifa for surgery.

“Doctors said she has internal bleeding in her chest and lungs and needs emergency surgery, but there’s no capacity,” Ryad explained. “She’s lying in pain, waiting for the chance to have the operation. We’re terrified. What did she do to deserve this?”

‘They bomb every day, everywhere’

Alongside the intensified bombardment, the Israeli military has continued to order Palestinians to evacuate entire neighborhoods across Gaza City, including Al-Daraj, Al-Zaytoun, Al-Sabra, and Al-Tuffah. But most of us in Gaza City, myself included, have decided to stay — not because we are unafraid, but because there is no safe place without a real ceasefire. And nearly every part of the city is already under warning.

On Monday, July 5, Walaa Salem was trying to sleep in her partially destroyed home in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood when a deafening Israeli booby-trap explosion shattered her window.

“Shrapnel flew through the broken glass,” Salem, 32, recounted. “I tried to understand what was happening. I looked at my face through my phone’s camera — it was covered in blood. I fainted.”

When she regained consciousness, her first instinct was to find her two visually impaired siblings, Ibrahim, 30, and Yousra, 28, to make sure they were still alive. She worried that airstrikes were coming, or worse: a ground incursion.

“They were frozen in fear,” she told +972. “I tried to calm them by lying — telling them the explosions were far from our house. Then I stopped the bleeding from my head with cotton and iodine.”

Salem, an Arabic teacher, has been the sole provider for her family of six since July 2024, when her father was shot in the head and killed by an Israeli quadcopter drone while collecting firewood near their home. Every day, she walks two hours each way to teach at a tent school on Al-Jalaa Street, despite the huge risks. “I’m so tired from the lack of food, and so scared because of the continuous Israeli bombings,” Salem said.“I wish I could stay at home until there’s a ceasefire, but I have to work to feed my family.”

Since the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October 2023, Salem’s family has repeatedly been forced to evacuate — from schools, relatives’ homes, and makeshift tents. Nonetheless, they have remained in northern Gaza.

Following the latest round of Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza City, Salem’s family had nowhere safe left to go. “All the places we used to run to are either destroyed or under evacuation orders, so we’ve decided to stay. Besides, we all know there is no safe place in Gaza.”

Just a day before Salem was injured, her grandfather Said, 73, and two uncles were wounded in a nearby airstrike. “An Israeli soldier called one of their neighbors [on the phone] and told them a square of buildings would be hit. They barely made it to the door before the bomb dropped,” she said.

Her uncles sustained minor injuries. But her grandfather, Said, was struck in the head, lost a significant amount of blood, and remains in intensive care.

“They bomb every day, everywhere in our neighborhood,” Salem lamented. “We know it’s dangerous to stay, but we have no choice.”

‘We don’t trust the evacuation orders’

On July 6, the Gaza Government Media Officereported that during the previous four days, Israel carried out 59 attacks, killing at least 288 Palestinians and injuring over 1,088. Ninety-nine of the victims were killed while trying to access food.

Waseem Abd Al-Nabi and his family of five had refused to leave their house in Al-Tuffah neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, even after hearing the news of the latest Israeli evacuation order. But on July 1, everything changed.

At around 6:30 a.m., an Israeli air strike hit a house nearby without any warning. “Stones and shrapnel rained down on us while we were sleeping,” Abd Al-Nabi said. “We were lucky the injuries were minor.”

Abd Al-Nabi and his brother carried their father, whose mobility was constrained by a previous leg injury. “We left without taking anything. We were scared another bomb would fall.”

With nowhere else to go, they walked two kilometers to take shelter in their small shop in Al-Daraj, also under evacuation orders.“Where do we go when all of Gaza is under threat?” Abd Al-Nabi, 28, asked. “We don’t trust the Israeli evacuation orders. They bomb even the areas they claim are safe.”

Now, their days are consumed by the struggle to survive, queueing for hours to get water, collecting firewood and searching for food. Abd Al-Nabi and his brother Salam often walk to Al-Rashid Street, hoping to receive aid from incoming trucks. Sometimes, they return with a bag of flour. More often, they come back with nothing — or injured, like so many others targeted in Israeli attacks on food distribution sites.

“We know we could be killed in line for food, in our homes, anywhere,” Abd Al-Nabi said. “I just hope that this time, a ceasefire is achieved and it holds. Even for a short while — just enough to stop the killing.”

Following a two-month total siege on the enclave, Israel began to allow a miniscule amount of food into Gaza at the end of May. But its use of starvation as a weapon of war has continued — and Palestinians like Yasmin Erheem, who is nine-months pregnant and suffering from severe malnutrition, are the ones paying the steepest price.

Yasmin, 20, now lives in a partially destroyed home in Al-Daraj neighborhood in eastern Gaza City with her husband Mohammed, their 18-month-old child, and 10 other relatives from both sides of the family.

“I wish there was a safe place I could take [Yasmin],” Mohammed said. “Every part of Gaza is being bombed. Evacuation orders feel more like a performance, as if to show the Israeli army’s humanity.

“We’ve evacuated more than five times over the past months, but danger was everywhere,” he continued. “Now, [Yasmin’s] body can’t keep up. Even the smallest effort makes her dizzy and completely exhausted.”

Last month, they managed to reach the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society in central Gaza City for an ultrasound. The doctor’s reaction, Mohammed said, “terrified us.”

“The baby is too small,” he recalled. “The pediatrician said Yasmin’s malnutrition puts the baby at risk of death or serious birth defects.”

Mohammed, who once owned a small shoe shop, has been out of work for months. His stock ran out early in the war, and whatever savings he had went toward food, medicine, and transport. Now, there’s nothing left.

“I sold Yasmin’s gold jewelry and some of our furniture just to buy white flour and whatever vegetables I could find in the market,” he said. “But it’s not enough. Sometimes I pretend I’m full so she can eat my share.”

Prices in Gaza have skyrocketed, and whatever food left is almost impossible to find. “I wish I could bring her fruits, vegetables, chicken, meat, anything,” Mohammed said. “But even when those things exist, they’re too expensive for people like us.”

With each passing day, Yasmin grows weaker. “I suffer from dehydration and constant heartburn,” she explained. “I wish there was medicine to ease the pain, but there’s nothing. I want to go to the hospital for another ultrasound, but I am too afraid to leave the house.”

Still, Yasmin clings to two fragile hopes: that her labor holds off long enough for her baby to gain strength, and that a ceasefire will arrive before the birth.

For now, Yasmin’s only wish is “to give birth in peace, and maybe eat something after.”