Yousef al-Mashharawi, Gaza City photographer and film-maker: “I have nowhere else to go.”

Yousef al-Mashharawi is a 32-year-old photographer and film-maker with two daughters and a son. They are sheltering with family in the Nasser district of Gaza City, but the risks of remaining are rising steeply.

“The fighter jets and helicopters do not stop firing. Last night was terrifying. The bombing has not stopped for the past six days. Every 45 minutes to an hour, there is a strike very close by,” Mashharawi told The Guardian. But he has no plans to leave.

“I haven’t exactly ‘decided’ to stay, but the truth is, I have nowhere else to go,” he said. The family was displaced to southern Gaza earlier in the war and he has no wish to go back.

“The army claimed it was a ‘humanitarian zone’, but that was completely false. It was the opposite. There were always strikes happening there, and they are still happening,” he said.

“Displacement also takes a psychological toll. No one likes to be displaced. I believe there is no truly safe area in the strip, whether in the north or the south, so we prefer to stay in the north. Death only comes once.”

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