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One family. One attack. 132 names. A Gaza investigation

Mohammed Nabil Abu Naser holds a handwritten list of family members killed in an October 2024 Israeli strike in northern Gaza.
Mahmoud Rehan
/
NPR
Mohammed Nabil Abu Naser holds a handwritten list of family members killed in an October 2024 Israeli strike in northern Gaza.

An Israeli strike on a Gaza apartment building killed 132 members of one family last October. It was one of the deadliest Israeli strikes of the Israel-Hamas war. The few survivors documented the dead.

It has been difficult to chronicle the enormous losses to Palestinian families during Israel's offensive in Gaza, one of the most destructive in recent history.

Working with journalists in Gaza, we reconstructed what happened to one large family in a single moment.

Members of the Abu Naser family made detailed lists of those who died and were wounded in the October 2024 strike on the family's apartment building in northern Gaza.
Mahmoud Rehan / NPR
/
NPR
Members of the Abu Naser family made detailed lists of those who died and were wounded in the October 2024 strike on the family's apartment building in northern Gaza.

On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage, according to Israeli government figures.

In response, Israel launched an offensive against Hamas in Gaza, killing nearly 50,000 people in more than a year of war, according to Gaza health officials.

The Abu Naser family owned and lived in an apartment building in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza. Their building was hit on Oct. 29, 2024, just months before a ceasefire. The family says more than 200 people were gathered in the building that night.

Surviving members of the Abu Naser family gather for a portrait in front of their destroyed family home during a recent ceasefire in northern Gaza.
Anas Baba / NPR
/
NPR
Surviving members of the Abu Naser family gather for a portrait in front of their destroyed family home during a recent ceasefire in northern Gaza.

The day after the strike, the Israeli military said it had targeted an "enemy spotter" acting as a lookout on the roof and posing a threat to Israeli forces. The military declined to release visual evidence.

We spoke with one of the few survivors.

Read the full visual narrative, which includes a reconstruction of what happened the night of the strike and in the aftermath, the Israeli military's response, a detailed family tree mapping out the extent of the family's loss, satellite imagery and drone video from the family's neighborhood

Copyright 2025 NPR

Daniel Estrin
Daniel Estrin is NPR's international correspondent in Jerusalem.
Daniel Wood
Daniel Wood is a visual journalist at NPR, where he brings data and analyses into complex topics by paired reporting with custom charts, maps and explainers. He focuses on data-rich topics like COVID-19 outcomes, climate change and politics. His interest in tracking a small outbreak of a novel coronavirus in January 2020 helped position NPR to be among the leading news organizations to provide daily updates on the growth and impact of COVID-19 around the country and globe.
Abu Bakr Bashir
Anas Baba
[Copyright 2024 NPR]
Ahmed Abuhamda
Mahmoud Rehan
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