Sibling hunt after 20 of family killed

A MAN who lost 20 of his family when Israeli bombs flattened their Gaza home and fears for his remaining two sisters is pleading for Britain to help stop the bloodshed.

London-based Ahmed Alnaouq, 29, said an airstrike killed his 75-year-old father, two brothers, three sisters, a cousin and 13 nieces and nephews – all children, with a tot aged just one – when two bombs hit flats in Deir Al Balah.

Unable to contact his sisters since Friday’s communication blackout in Gaza, he said: “They are alone in Gaza. If they haven’t been killed already, I fear they may soon be.”

Ahmed, who moved to the UK in 2019 to study journalism, is founder of We Are Not Numbers, a Palestinian youth advocacy organisation.

He said: “Words can’t describe what I’m going through. My message to Rishi Sunak is ‘please stop this slaughter.’ This is not a war on Hamas, it’s a war against the Palestinian people.”

One sister visited the site of the bombing that hit their family last Sunday. Ahmed said: “She told me she couldn’t bear the smell of the buried bodies.

“Nine of my relatives’ bodies are still under the rubble of my family home. She said she couldn’t see them but she could smell them.” He recalled: “I woke up at 4.30am in a panic and checked my phone and saw people had been sending me Whatsapp messages and deleting them.

“I knew something was wrong. I rang a friend. He said ‘your house was just bombed and there are a number of people killed’.

“It felt like my heart was going to come out of my chest. I did not want to cry out loud and wake my flatmates.

“Then I realised they already knew and they came to me and I burst out crying.

“I wouldn’t wish that feeling on my worst enemy.” with killed relatives