MIAMI (WSVN) - A South Florida man says he is desperate to hear from his brother in the Middle East after Israeli airstrikes claimed the lives of nearly two dozen loved ones.
Cellphone video from inside Gaza captured the chaos after a bomb went off earlier this week.
The ongoing violence in on the mind of Abd B., who spoke with 7News about the toll that the conflict has taken on him.
“How have I been living in the last six days? In constant fear, in constant sadness, in constant worry that one morning I will wake up and lose yet another [family member],” he said.
Abd, a South Florida resident who was born and raised in Gaza City, said many of the loved ones who perished as a result of the airstrikes were children.
He said he first learned about it on the news.
“I saw my family named on the news, the family name, and then the description of the street. I was crying before I even called,” he said.
Video showed his relatives’ home reduced to rubble.
“In the last six days alone, we lost 21 people on my father’s side in one bomb,” he said. “Then, the following day, a whole family of our neighborhood, two of whom I grew up with, those friends, [were killed].”
To make matters worse, Abd said, he hasn’t been able to reach his brother for days.
“The communication or the call in itself was spotty. While I’m on the phone with him, I heard him probably three or four times, bombings around him,” he said.
Abd revealed the last thing he talked about with his brother.
“He said that ‘I received a random call to evacuate the house, so I evacuated the house. I just moved my family, and I am going to look for diapers and milk for my son,'” he said.
Abd said he is holding out hope that his brother and his family are OK, and he called this war “utter insanity.”
“For people who are there on the ground, this is ethnic cleansing,” he said. “When we look at it here, we call this war, we call this madness.”
It’s “madness” that Abd prays will end soon, so no more lives are lost in either side.
“War is bad, for everybody. The loss of life for anyone — anyone, not just in Palestine, everywhere — is tragic,” he said.
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