For a decade, Palestinian bank worker Shady Salama Al Rayyes paid into a $93,000 mortgage on his flat in a tall, modern block in one of Gaza City’s prime neighbourhoods.
Now, he and his family are destitute, after fleeing an Israeli demolition strike that collapsed the building in a cloud of black smoke and dust.
The September 5 attack on the 15-storey Mushtaha Tower marked the start of an intensified Israeli military demolition campaign targeting high-rise buildings ahead of a ground assault towards the heart of the densely populated city, which started this week.
Over the past two weeks, Israel’s armed forces say they have demolished up to 20 Gaza City tower blocks they say are used by Hamas.
The campaign has made hundreds of people homeless.
In a similar time frame, Israeli forces have flattened areas in the city’s Zeitoun, Tuffah, Shejaia and Sheikh Al Radwan neighbourhoods, among others, residents told Reuters.
The damage since August to scores of buildings in Sheikh Al Radwan is visible in satellite imagery reviewed by the news agency.
Al Rayyes said he feared the destruction was aimed at permanently clearing the population from Gaza City, a view shared by the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR).
Its spokesperson Thameen Al Kheetan said in a statement that such a deliberate effort to relocate the population would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
“I never thought I would leave Gaza City, but the explosions are non-stop,” Al Rayyes said. “I can’t risk the safety of my children, so I am packing up and will leave for the south.”
Al Rayyes vowed, however, never to leave Gaza entirely.
Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in May that most of Gaza would soon be “totally destroyed” and the population confined to a narrow strip of land near the border with Egypt.
Last week a UN inquiry found Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. UN experts say destruction of civilian housing and infrastructure can amount to a war crime.
Before the war, Mushtaha Tower was popular with Gaza City’s professional class and students drawn to its ocean views and convenient location near a public park and two universities.
It originally housed about 50 families, but that number had tripled in recent months as people took in relatives displaced from other parts of Gaza, said Al Rayyes.
Scores of tents housing more displaced families had spread around the tower’s base.
Upper floors of the building had been damaged by previous strikes.
On the morning of September 5, a neighbour got a call from an Israeli army officer instructing him to spread the word to evacuate the building within minutes or they were “going to bring it down on our heads,” Al Rayyes said.
“Panic, fear, confusion, loss, despair and pain overwhelmed all of us. I saw people running on our bare feet; some didn’t even take their mobile phones or documents. I didn’t take passports or identity cards,” said Al Rayyes, who had once hoped to pay off his mortgage by this year.
“We carried nothing with us, my wife and my two children, Adam, 9, and Shahd, 11, climbed down the stairs and ran away.”
Video filmed by Reuters shows what happened next. From the air, two projectiles exploded almost simultaneously into the base of the tower, demolishing it in around six seconds.
Even before the current offensive on Gaza City, almost 80 per cent of buildings in Gaza – roughly 247,195 structures – had been damaged or destroyed since the war started, according to the latest data from the UN Satellite Centre.
This included 213 hospitals and 1,029 schools.
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