An Israeli strike on a Gaza apartment building killed 132 members of one family in October 2024. It was one of the deadliest Israeli strikes of the Israel-Hamas war. The few survivors documented the dead.
Investigating one of the deadliest moments of the war in Gaza.
Daniel Estrin, Daniel Wood, Abu Bakr Bashir, Anas Baba, Ahmad Abuhamda, Mahmoud Rehan, Connie Hanzhang Jin
Updated April 27, 2025
On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage, according to Israeli government figures.
In response, Israel launched an offensive against Hamas in Gaza, killing more than 51,000 people in over a year of war, according to Gaza health officials.
The Abu Naser family’s building was hit on Oct. 29, 2024, just months before a ceasefire.
Abu Naser
apartment building
Abu Naser
apartment building
GAZA CITY
GAZA CITY
DEIR
AL-BALAH
DEIR
AL-BALAH
KHAN
YOUNIS
KHAN
YOUNIS
Red areas indicate buildings damaged or destroyed during the war, according to researchers’ estimates.
Red areas indicate buildings damaged or destroyed during the war, according to researchers’ estimates.
RAFAH
RAFAH
Waseem Abu Naser, 32, was taken to a hospital in northern Gaza.
He was there with other wounded relatives.
Waseem spoke to us on the phone from his hospital bed a couple of weeks after the strike. He described what happened.
The night before the strike, he says he was on the top floor of his family’s five-story building.
Like many in Gaza during the war, he was sheltering with his extended family and neighbors.
The family says more than 200 people were gathered in the building that night.
Shoemakers. Electricians. University students. Grandparents. Young children.
Their neighborhood was under a fierce Israeli offensive that cut off most aid, besieged hospitals and killed thousands in the ensuing months. The Israeli military says it was fighting a Hamas battalion trying to regroup, and dropped leaflets calling on civilians to evacuate. Most fled.
“We packed our bags,” Waseem Abu Naser said.
But there was intense firing, and Israeli drones swarmed the neighborhood. Waseem says it became too dangerous to escape. Then the Israeli military hit the house next door. Debris flew into the family’s building, filling the stairwell with rubble and trapping almost everyone inside.
He and his family gathered in the living room. They put mattresses on the floor and prayed.
The big strike came the next morning, around 4 a.m.
The entire building came crashing down.
Waseem Abu Naser was trapped under the rubble with his
“I heard my son saying, ‘Dad, I’m suffocating.’ I told him, ‘Take a breath. They’re coming to get us out.’”
About a half hour later, he heard his cousin Mohammed Nabil’s voice.
It was Mohammed Nabil Abu Naser, 27. He was sheltering nearby and came to rescue his relatives.
“When I looked at the ground, it was all bodies and body parts,” Mohammed Nabil said.
Two days later, they and other survivors from the family fled the area, passed through an Israeli checkpoint and took shelter at a cousin’s house in Gaza City.
They kept updating the list: Who was alive? Who was presumed dead under the rubble?
Ola wrote their names and ages in green ink, small letters and neat rows.
Two pages, two columns each.
By her most recent count, 132 relatives and two friends sheltering with them were killed. 134 people in total. More than 40 were wounded.
More than 40% of the dead were children.
The youngest victim: a baby girl named Sham, 6 weeks old. Ola Abu Naser buried the baby together with her father in the same shroud.
Family photo of Sham Abu Naser
The eldest victims: Issa Abu Naser, 79, and his sister Amneh Abu Naser, 75.
Family photo of Amneh Abu Naser
Those who survived suffered a huge loss.
Waseem Abu Naser, whom we spoke to at the hospital, lost his wife, father, grandfather and four of his five siblings. His mother, sister and two young children were wounded.
Family photo of Areej Abu Naser, 26, wife of Waseem
This was their neighborhood at the beginning of the war. They had lived in this building since 1988.
This is two weeks after the Abu Naser family’s building was struck.
This is just one month later.
This is how the neighborhood looks now.
The Abu Naser survivors are now sheltering in a partially damaged house near the ruins of their old building.
They are still there, even as the war has resumed. Israeli troops launched a new ground offensive in their area.
They gathered for a family portrait in front of their destroyed home.
The poster behind them says: “Here are the martyrs of the Abu Naser family massacre.”
The family says some bodies are still trapped under the rubble.
“Every person had a dream,” Ola Abu Naser said about her family.
“Everyone talked about what they wanted to do after the war.”
