The Gaza-born, UK-based journalist, who has lost more than 20 family members in Israeli airstrikes, has taken pieces from an online platform he co-created for young Palestinians and collated them in a new book

• ‘Gaza, it breaks my heart to see you in this state’: three stories from young Palestinian writers

On 22 October 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit Ahmed Alnaouq’s home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, killing 21 members of his family, including his 75-year-old father, two brothers, three sisters and all of their children.

At the time, Alnaouq was living in London, where he works as a journalist and human rights activist. “It crushed me,” he says of the attack. Unable to return home, he could only watch helplessly from afar and grieve alone. Later, he tells me that it’s not anger or hate that consumes him now, but survivor’s guilt. “All the time I think: ‘Why? Why am I alive? Why wasn’t I killed with my family?’”