#Title

‘The bombing is all around us’

Journalists on the ground share the pain of Gaza
AFP, Khan Yunis
Hundreds of Palestinian journalists have had to flee south from Gaza City and work in fear for their lives in appalling conditions as Israeli air raids pound the territory.
Tents in a hospital courtyard have become their newsroom by day and dormitory at night.
Some work for local media outlets and others for international news organisations. But all suffer the same ordeal as they try to do their jobs amid the violence and suffering caused by the Israel-Hamas war.
On October 7, the Palestinian Islamist group launched deadly raids across the Gaza border into Israel which says 1,400 people, most of whom civilians, died in the attacks.
Gaza’s Hamas government says that retaliatory Israeli air and artillery bombing since then has left more than 6,500 dead, including some 2,700 children. Hamas also dragged more than 200 hostages from Israel back into Gaza on October 7.
Since the war erupted, the Palestinian journalists’ union says that more than 22 of its members have been killed in the territory.
Media representatives in the Palestinian territory, including AFP, used to work from offices in Gaza City.
But intense Israeli bombardments, which destroyed many buildings, forced news organisations to send their teams towards the south, even as Israeli strikes hit targets across the entire territory.
Several hundred journalists, including those from AFP, now find themselves under canvas at the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
When they are not out reporting, they use the tents to work in by day and to sleep in at night, if the sound of bombing allows.
The hospital teems with women and men in flak jackets stamped “Press”, helmets on their heads because of frequent deadly blasts nearby.
The Nasser hospital also currently houses an estimated more than 30,000 Palestinians displaced by the war.
Hygienic conditions are basic, but at least the hospital generators mean the journalists can charge phones, laptops, cameras and other equipment that enables them to keep doing their job.
Water supplies are often cut, and with no showers washing becomes very basic.
Inside the tents, some sleep on mattresses, others on the ground, covering themselves with whatever they can.
To get some privacy, many of the women sleep in their cars parked in the hospital grounds.
“It’s been two weeks that I’ve worked from the Nasser hospital,” Wissam Yassin told AFP. She works for the US Arabic-language television channel Alhurra.
“I sleep in the car. I drink very little water in order not to have to go to the toilet,” she said.
“The bombing is all around us. Several times we’ve had to abandon our cameras and not go on air for live broadcasts.
“To have a shower I went to a family I don’t know near the hospital, and in the evening I sleep in the car.”
Yassin has covered several Israeli offensives against the Gaza Strip, but said she has “never experienced such difficult conditions”.
“I left my home in Gaza on the morning of October 7 and haven’t been back since,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t answer calls from my nine-year-old daughter Bana because her crying is heartbreaking and I have no words to calm her.”