In War-Torn Gaza, Fears of a New ‘Nakba'

 A woman reacts after an Israeli strike near an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on October 21, 2023. (AFP)
A woman reacts after an Israeli strike near an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on October 21, 2023. (AFP)
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In War-Torn Gaza, Fears of a New ‘Nakba'

 A woman reacts after an Israeli strike near an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on October 21, 2023. (AFP)
A woman reacts after an Israeli strike near an United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) school in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on October 21, 2023. (AFP)

Omar Ashur became a refugee during the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" experienced by Palestinians following Israel's creation 75 years ago and now fears the ongoing bombardment of Gaza will again force him into exile.

A retired general from the Palestinian Authority security forces, 83-year-old Ashur lives in Al-Zahra in central Gaza where Israeli missiles flattened an area of more than 20 buildings late on Thursday.

Residents had been warned to flee before the strikes, but many of them raced into the street with no idea of where to go.

When they returned in the early hours of Friday morning, they found a scene of devastation, with several blocks of buildings reduced to smoking ruins and rubble, an AFP journalist said.

The area lies about 10 kilometers (six miles) south of Gaza City where Israeli warplanes have focused their fierce bombardments since Hamas militants stormed into Israel on October 7, beginning an attack that has killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, Israeli officials say.

Although Israel urged Palestinians living in northern Gaza to head south ahead of an expected ground operation, Ashur decided to stay.

Beyond the ongoing bombardment, he also worries about the future, fearing the war will push Gaza's residents -- two-thirds of whom are refugees -- to flee again.

'Destruction with a clear aim'

"What's happening is dangerous," Ashur told AFP.

"I fear that the ongoing destruction has a clear aim, so people don't have a place to live which will spark a new Nakba," he said, referring to the 760,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel's creation.

Gaza's population of 2.4 million is largely made up of descendants of those refugees.

Ashur was just eight when he and his family fled in 1948 from Majdal -- what is today the Israeli town of Ashkelon -- to Gaza.

And for him, the ongoing war brings back painful memories.

"What's happening today is much worse. At the time, Israel would shoot to kill and force people to flee but the current situation is more horrific," he said.

The October 7 attack was the deadliest attack on Israeli soil since the state was founded, with most of the victims shot, mutilated or burnt to death on the first day, according to Israeli officials.

Since then, more than 4,300 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed in relentless Israeli bombardments, according to Gaza's health ministry.

'A hellish night'

At least a million Gazans have been displaced by the ongoing bombing campaign, the UN says, with Israel also cutting off supplies of water, electricity, fuel and food to the impoverished enclave.

Gazing at the destruction in Al-Zahra is Rami Abu Wazna, his haggard face struggling to take it in. At least 24 buildings were razed, an AFP journalist said.

"Even in my worst nightmares, I never thought this could be possible," he whispers.

Thousands of residents who had fled the neighborhood spent the night trying to find shelter from dozens of Israeli strikes.

"Why bomb us, we're civilians! Where will we go? Everything is gone," Abu Wazna said.

"We heard our grandparents speak of the Nakba and today we're the ones living it," he continued. "But we won't leave our land."

Among the ruins, Umm Ahmad and her two sons are trying to salvage a few of their belongings.

"We've had a hellish night. The sky was red, everything was destroyed," she says, her robes covered in dust.

"We didn't take anything with us. I'm trying to find clothes for the children so they don't get cold," she says.

"They want to make us homeless."



Fear Stalks Tehran as Israel Bombards, Shelters Fill Up and Communicating Grows Harder

Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
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Fear Stalks Tehran as Israel Bombards, Shelters Fill Up and Communicating Grows Harder

Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)

The streets of Tehran are empty, businesses closed, communications patchy at best. With no bona fide bomb shelters open to the public, panicked masses spend restless nights on the floors of metro stations as strikes boom overhead.

This is Iran’s capital city, just under a week into a fierce Israeli blitz to destroy the country's nuclear program and its military capabilities. After knocking out much of Iran's air defense system, Israel says its warplanes have free rein over the city's skies. US President Donald Trump on Monday told Tehran's roughly 10 million residents to evacuate “immediately.”

Thousands have fled, spending hours in gridlock as they head toward the suburbs, the Caspian Sea, or even Armenia or Türkiye. But others — those elderly and infirm — are stuck in high-rise apartment buildings. Their relatives fret: what to do?

Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300, a human rights group says. State media, also a target of bombardment, have stopped reporting on the attacks, leaving Iranians in the dark. There are few visible signs of state authority: Police appear largely undercover, air raid sirens are unreliable, and there’s scant information on what to do in case of attack.

Shirin, 49, who lives in the southern part of Tehran, said every call or text to friends and family in recent days has felt like it could be the last.

“We don’t know if tomorrow we will be alive,” she said.

Many Iranians feel conflicted. Some support Israel's targeting of Iranian political and military officials they see as repressive. Others staunchly defend the country and retaliatory strikes on Israel. Then, there are those who oppose Iran’s rulers, but still don't want to see their country bombed.

To stay, or to go? The Associated Press interviewed five people in Iran and one Iranian American in the US over the phone. All spoke either on the condition of anonymity or only allowed their first names to be used, for fear of retribution from the state against them or their families.

Most of the calls ended abruptly and within minutes, cutting off conversations as people grew nervous or because the connection dropped. Iran’s government has acknowledged disrupting internet access. It says it's to protect the country, though that has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world.

Iranians in the diaspora wait anxiously for news from relatives. One, an Iranian American human rights researcher in the US, said he last heard from relatives when some were trying to flee Tehran earlier in the week. He believes that lack of gas and traffic prevented them from leaving.

The most heartbreaking interaction, he said, was when his older cousins with whom he grew up in Iran told him “We don’t know where to go. If we die, we die.”

“Their sense was just despair,” he said.

Some families have made the decision to split up.

A 23-year-old Afghan refugee who has lived in Iran for four years said he stayed behind in Tehran but sent his wife and newborn son out of the city after a strike Monday hit a nearby pharmacy.

“It was a very bad shock for them,” he said.

Some, like Shirin, said fleeing was not an option. The apartment buildings in Tehran are towering and dense. Her father has Alzheimer’s and needs an ambulance to move. Her mother's severe arthritis would make even a short trip extremely painful.

Still, hoping escape might be possible, she spent the last several days trying to gather their medications. Her brother waited at a gas station until 3 a.m., only to be turned away when the fuel ran out. As of Monday, gas was being rationed to under 20 liters (5 gallons) per driver at stations across Iran after an Israeli strike set fire to the world's largest gas field.

Some people, like Arshia, said they are just tired.

“I don’t want to go in traffic for 40 hours, 30 hours, 20 hours, just to get to somewhere that might get bombed eventually,” he said.

The 22-year-old has been staying in the house with his parents since the initial Israeli strike. He said his once-lively neighborhood of Saadat Abad in northwestern Tehran is now a ghost town. Schools are closed. Very few people even step outside to walk their dogs. Most local stores have run out of drinking water and cooking oil. Others closed.

Still, Arshia said the prospect of finding a new place is too daunting.

“We don’t have the resources to leave at the moment,” he said.

Residents are on their own

No air raid sirens went off as Israeli strikes began pounding Tehran before dawn Friday. For many, it was an early sign civilians would have to go it alone.

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Tehran was a low-slung city, many homes had basements to shelter in, and there were air raid drills and sirens. Now the capital is packed with close-built high-rise apartments without shelters.

“It's a kind of failing of the past that they didn’t build shelters,” said a 29-year-old Tehran resident who left the city Monday. “Even though we’ve been under the shadow of a war, as long as I can remember.”

Her friend's boyfriend was killed while going to the store.

“You don’t really expect your boyfriend or your anyone, really to leave the house and never return when they just went out for a routine normal shopping trip,” she said.

Those who choose to relocate do so without help from the government. The state has said it is opening mosques, schools and metro stations for use as shelters. Some are closed, others overcrowded.

Hundreds crammed into one Tehran metro station Friday night. Small family groups lay on the floor. One student, a refugee from another country, said she spent 12 hours in the station with her relatives.

“Everyone there was panicking because of the situation,” she said. “Everyone doesn’t know what will happen next, if there is war in the future and what they should do. People think nowhere is safe for them.”

Soon after leaving the station, she saw that Israel had warned a swath of Tehran to evacuate.

“For immigrant communities, this is so hard to live in this kind of situation,” she said, explaining she feels like she has nowhere to escape to, especially not her home country, which she asked not be identified.

Fear of Iran mingles with fear of Israel

For Shirin, the hostilities are bittersweet. Despite being against the theocracy and its treatment of women, the idea that Israel may determine the future does not sit well with her.

“As much as we want the end of this regime, we didn’t want it to come at the hands of a foreign government,” she said. “We would have preferred that if there were to be a change, it would be the result of a people’s movement in Iran.”

Meanwhile, the 29-year-old who left Tehran had an even more basic message for those outside Iran:

“I just want people to remember that whatever is happening here, it’s not routine business for us. People’s lives here — people’s livelihoods — feel as important to them as they feel to anyone in any other place. How would you feel if your city or your country was under bombardment by another country, and people were dying left and right?”

“We are kind of like, this can’t be happening. This can’t be my life.”