ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
There have been tens of thousands of Israeli military strikes in the Gaza war. One this October stands out. Israel hit a five-story building housing an extended family of well over a hundred people. The military said it was targeting an enemy spotter on the roof. The soaring death toll made headlines.
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MATTHEW MILLER: This is a horrifying incident with a horrifying result.
SHAPIRO: At the time, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the U.S. asked Israel for an explanation. It still hasn't gotten one. NPR has collected survivor testimonies, and the family provided lists of the dead, showing this strike was deadlier than previously reported. NPR's Daniel Estrin has the story.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Documenting the dead is difficult in Beit Lahia, North Gaza. It's under one of the fiercest Israeli assaults of the entire war, going on now for nearly three months. Rescue crews can't reach the area. International journalists are barred. In recent weeks, we asked a Palestinian journalist in North Gaza to record our conversations with survivors of the strike, which took place on October 29. Survivor Wassim Abu Nassar (ph) is in a hospital bed with two black eyes.
WASSIM ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: "The day before the strike was a difficult, difficult day," he says. "The Israeli military was ordering evacuations." And Wassim says his family was planning to escape.
W ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: Wassim says, "we'd packed our bags and prepared our things." But he says it got too dangerous. He says there was shooting everywhere. At night, the military struck the house next door. The military now tells us it was a, quote, "targeted strike aimed at terrorist infrastructure." Debris flew into the Abu Nassar family building, filling the stairwell with rubble, trapping almost everyone inside.
W ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: Wassim says there was no way out. He and his family huddled in the living room and prayed. The strike on the Abu Nassar family building came the next morning, around 4 a.m. October 29. An Israeli military spokesman said a spotter on the roof had threatened troops without providing evidence. Wassim was pinned under his fallen ceiling.
W ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: He says, "I can't see, but I can hear. I hear my son saying, Dad, I'm suffocating. I told him, take a breath. They're coming to get us out." It took more than half an hour for his 32-year-old cousin, Muhammad Abu Nassar (ph), to reach them. Muhammad picks up the story from here.
MUHAMMAD ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: Muhammad says, "the scene was all bodies and body parts." Gaza's Civil Defence rescue service has told NPR it couldn't reach the besieged area.
M ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: Muhammad says, "they told me, handle it on your own." He cried out to neighbors for help. They climbed into the rubble and removed the wounded and the dead. His cousin, 27-year-old Ola Abu Nassar (ph), sheltering across the street, took pen and paper and became the official documenter of her family's loss, body after body.
OLA ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: "I kept identifying one by one. For example, oh, this is my cousin, Sohar (ph). Forgive me, cousin. I just sat with you yesterday, and now I'm writing down your name with the dead," she says. That morning, they buried more than 100 relatives in two mass graves. Ola and her cousin Muhammad evacuated to safety but never stopped revising the list. Who'd been left under the rubble? Who eventually died of their wounds? They didn't want to forget anyone.
Ola wrote out the names and ages in green ink, small letters, neat rows, filling two pages, 130 dead - a much higher count than reported previously. At the time, media reports put the death toll around 90. It's become common in Gaza for families to need to count their own dead, says Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
RAJI SOURANI: If they didn't do that, who will do it? You want to know who died, who stayed alive, at least. I mean, people just bring pen and pad, writing with blood and pain.
ESTRIN: His human rights group is preparing to submit the Abu Nassar family's list of the dead to international courts investigating Israel for alleged war crimes. The family's list nearly matches a count by Airwars. NPR asked the London-based war monitoring group to look into the incident. Out of nearly 1,000 strikes the group has assessed throughout the Gaza war, it says the Abu Nassar family strike is among the top three deadliest.
The U.S. State Department tells NPR it's still waiting for answers from Israel. NPR asked the Israeli military detailed questions about the strike, including how it calculated the risk to civilians. The military said the, quote, "details" are under review. It would not explain why this level of firepower on a packed building of civilians was necessary. Throughout the war, Israel says it's been in and out of this part of Gaza, trying to rid it of Hamas, but Hamas keeps regrouping there. Hamas has released its own videos of militants shooting at Israeli soldiers in this North Gaza offensive. Israel's military chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, met troops there in November. He said this current assault against Hamas will create lasting security for Israelis living near the border with Gaza.
HERZI HALEVI: (Speaking Hebrew).
ESTRIN: "We are creating the conditions for this security to endure, to not be fleeting," he said. Israel has forced virtually everyone out of what was once this densely populated corner of Gaza. Gaza's Civil Defence tells NPR at least 4,000 people have been killed in this ongoing northern offensive.
O ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: For Ola Abu Nassar and her cousins, those dead are not just numbers. She continues to work on the list where she's sheltering. An Israeli drone buzzes above. She writes out her dead relatives' occupations. They were shoemakers, electricians, university students. She writes out the number of people who were injured. NPR mapped out the extended Abu Nassar family tree. Nine nuclear families were wiped out. Others were only left with two or three survivors. Close to half of the dead were children. The youngest killed was 6 weeks old, the eldest 75.
O ABU NASSAR: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: "In one moment, we became just a few people you could count on your fingers," she says. "Everyone had plans for after the war. It was all destroyed in a moment." The offensive in North Gaza continues, and satellite imagery of the Abu Nassar family's neighborhood now shows most of the homes erased, just faint outlines of where they used to be, like shadows. Daniel Estrin, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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