On August 26, Amgad Al-Mahalawi, my Palestinian friend, and his family had to flee their previously destroyed home in Gaza City.  

He texted me that night:  We had to leave home; the bombing was too intense.  Shells were everywhere, and every house was being hit by bullets. There were dead and wounded people in the streets. We fled under heavy gunfire with only the clothes on our back.  When the shelling let up a little, I slipped back to our house to bring some clothes for the children and diapers and milk for our daughter and food for the family. The Israelis are using total destruction, block by block in Gaza City, and they had just moved into the area of our home.  They will destroy it all.

They want to destroy all of the houses, so that the people here will not be able to return to their homes, and everyone will need to migrate.

We have fled only about a half a kilometer from our home and are now sitting in a store near my wife’s relative’s house.  We don’t know what to do or where to go.

Amgad texted me this morning, on August 27:

My children are crying and wetting themselves in terror from the bombing.

I need to leave Gaza very soon, because it is impossible to live here. 

Last night we slept in an almost completely destroyed room in a factory. We hope that the war will end soon or that we will travel abroad as soon as possible.

The Israeli army has communicated: Evacuation of Gaza City is inevitable.  Every family must relocate to the south where they will receive the most abundant humanitarian aid.

They want all people to leave, but they are bombing constantly and make no attempt to make it possible for anyone leave.

They bomb a lot in the south and then tell us to go there.  All of the aid, you know, is stolen by Israeli-approved Palestinian criminal gangs and sold in the markets. International organizations are not able to work freely in the south.

Please pray for my family, and for an end of the war and this genocide.