SAEDNEWS: In Gaza City, families were given just 30 minutes to flee before Israeli airstrikes demolished their high-rise homes, leaving thousands homeless and turning towers into symbols of both survival and loss.
According to Saed News; On Friday morning, 49-year-old Abu Salah Khalil believed his biggest challenge would be how to feed 17 family members crowded inside his apartment in Gaza City’s Mushtaha Tower. Three generations shared the space: his elderly parents, his brother’s family, his wife, and four children. The day started with the aroma of coffee and discussions about a simple meal of maqluba without meat. One nephew even studied nervously for online graduation exams, scheduled despite 22 months of war.
Moments later, everything changed. Screams echoed in the hallway. A neighbor shouted: the tower would be bombed. They had 30 minutes.
The Mushtaha Tower, 12 storeys high with eight apartments per floor, became the first Gaza high-rise destroyed by Israeli forces that week. Without electricity, elevators were useless. Families stumbled down dark stairwells, children sobbing, mothers pulling whichever child they could.
Abu Salah and his brother carried their paralyzed father while his wife guided their aging mother. He admits he barely knew how his children made it out. “I don’t know who carried my two-year-old,” he said. “My only thought was to save my father.”
Minutes later, the tower was hit twice. The second strike reduced it to rubble. Abu Salah trembled as he watched decades of family history collapse in seconds.
With their home gone, Abu Salah’s family joined thousands now living on pavements and in makeshift tents. “At night, we couldn’t sleep,” he recalled. “My children asked: where will we rest? On bare floors? On the cold ground?”
Such scenes are now routine in Gaza City, where towers once symbolized vertical resilience in one of the most crowded places on Earth.
The following day, 50-year-old Nadia Maarouf prepared beans outside her tent in Tal al-Hawa when she heard Al-Soussi Tower would be bombed. Her family, displaced from Beit Lahiya months earlier, panicked. Her son, who had lost a leg in shelling, screamed he didn’t want to die.
Within minutes, the family scattered in the streets, each running in a different direction. Nadia carried both her toddler grandson and a crying child from a neighbor’s tent. “My heart was breaking,” she said. The tower was flattened within half an hour.
When they returned, Nadia’s family dug with their bare hands through the rubble to salvage a few belongings. “We can’t afford to replace anything,” she said. Dust filled the air, making it hard to breathe.
On Sunday, Israeli strikes destroyed Al-Ru’ya Tower, designed by engineer Ahmed Shamia, who had been killed earlier in May. His widow, Sarah al-Qattaa, described the building as “a living memory.” Ahmed had envisioned the tower as a modern landmark reflecting Gaza’s spirit. For Sarah, watching it fall was like losing her husband a second time.
Palestinian Civil Defence reports at least 50 residential buildings have been destroyed in recent weeks. Writer Akram al-Sourani called Gaza’s towers “small cities stacked vertically.” They weren’t luxuries but necessities in a place with little space.
In a viral poem, he mourned not just the walls but the fragments of daily life left behind: a Barbie doll, an internet bill, a bathrobe on the bathroom door. “Each elevator carried a thousand stories,” he wrote.
For Abu Salah, Nadia, Sarah, and countless others, Gaza’s towers were more than buildings. They were memories, safety nets, and dreams stitched together in concrete. Their loss leaves families scattered, grieving not only for homes but for the lives those walls once held.
