Thu Sep 11 10:50:18 UTC 2025: ## Families in Gaza City Displaced as Israeli Airstrikes Target Residential Towers
**Gaza City, Gaza Strip** – Families in Gaza City are reeling after a series of Israeli airstrikes targeting residential towers, leaving them displaced and traumatized. As Israel intensifies its assault in northern Gaza, high-rise buildings that once housed multiple families are being reduced to rubble, forcing residents to flee with little to no notice.
One family, sheltering 17 relatives in the Mushtaha Tower, narrowly escaped after receiving a 30-minute warning. Abu Salah Khalil described the chaotic scene as they carried his disabled father down six flights of stairs amidst screaming neighbors and terrified children. Moments after evacuating, the tower was bombed, leaving them with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the trauma of witnessing their home destroyed.
Similar scenes played out near the al-Soussi Tower, where Nadia Maarouf and her family, already displaced from their home in Beit Lahiya, were forced to abandon their makeshift tent after receiving word of an imminent strike. Her son, who lost a leg in a previous shelling, panicked as the family fled, leaving behind their few remaining possessions.
The destruction of Al-Ru’ya Tower, designed by the late engineer Ahmed Shamia, was particularly painful for his widow, Sarah al-Qattaa. She described the tower as a “living memory” of her husband’s architectural dreams for Gaza City, a symbol of life and beauty now reduced to rubble.
According to the Palestinian Civil Defence, at least 50 buildings have been destroyed in the recent campaign. Writer Akram al-Sourani mourned the loss of these “vertical refuges” in a viral poem, highlighting the devastating impact on families who have lost not just their homes, but their history and memories. “The tower isn’t just a building,” he wrote, “it’s an entire neighborhood, a small city teeming with life.”
First Piper 