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2024 Election Coverage

Resident Offers View From Inside Gaza City

A Gaza City resident says he's been sleeping in his living room for the last three days because of fears an Israeli airstrike will hit a police building he can see from his bedroom window.

"We're expecting it to be bombed anytime," says Muhammad Shariff, who is also executive director of the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children.

Shariff tells NPR's Guy Raz that residents are limiting their movements. "We go to the supermarket to get things. Of course, we try to do everything between 10 o'clock and 12 o'clock noon. It seems like this is a part of the day that airstrikes kind of slow down," he says.

He says damage is spread throughout the city. "It's amazing. One cannot describe. My apartment is in the center of many targets, so we've been living a really terrifying experience," he says.

Shariff says he's been in Gaza for six years, but friends who have lived their whole lives there tell him "they've never seen such heavy airstrikes — such targeting everything everywhere, not taking in consideration human casualties."

Shariff also says he saw a missile launched from inside Gaza City on Friday.

"They used to launch it from the border lines, and now it seems like ... they're launching them from inside the city, so we're actually anxious to see what's going to happen right now."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.