• ActionAid is working in Gaza providing essential supplies like food and medicine for people whose homes have been damaged or destroyed.

Tanks and airstrikes blasted holes in people’s homes, offering us a glimpse into their lives, and these evocative images of Gaza residents show them with cherished items salvaged from the devastation

A child’s toy, a torn school book, a rolled prayer mat, some tracksuit bottoms, a battered saucepan, odd shoes – so many odd shoes – half hidden in the rubble. And the rubble itself, mountains of it: homes reduced to grey lumps of masonry, mangled metal, shards of glass.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aleh: ‘This is my second-favourite toy, Foo. She sleeps with me at night and I covet her like she is my own daughter:’ Aleh’s family now sleep in the bathroom, one of the only rooms left in their house. Aleh’s favourite toy, a bridesmaid doll, was lost in the wreckage.

Amid the devastation of Gaza, in the final days of this summer’s war, were survivors of the 50-day military onslaught. Families – old men, pregnant women, solemn-eyed children – stumbled about the ruins of their lives, looking for anything that could be salvaged.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I was bought this bike for my 15th birthday. I used to ride it to market to buy food for the family.’ Mussab’s sister, Duaa, was killed in a rocket attack. His brother is calling his unborn daughter Duaa in her memory.

In Shujai’iya, the area of Gaza City that saw some of the worst fighting as Israeli tanks and bulldozers bludgeoned through the neighbourhood, the destruction was a vision of hell. Factories, shops, houses and apartment buildings were pulverised, streets torn up. Many families hung signs amid the rubble, bearing their names and phone numbers, and sometimes the number of rooms or people who had lived there. This was done partly with an eye to future compensation, but also a poignant marker: this was my home.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ghada: ‘The only precious thing I have left is my baby. As soon as my house was hit, she was the first and only thing I took.’ Ghada now lives in a school. She desperately needs food for herself and milk and clothes for the baby.

In other places, shells and airstrikes had destroyed one part of a house while leaving other rooms virtually intact. Sometimes missiles tore open a view into a living room or bedroom; like a doll’s house whose facade had been opened up, you could inspect the occupant’s choice of furnishings from a distance.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nadia: ‘This is a piece of the bed I bought my son and his bride to be. They were due to marry in a few days.’ Thirteen members of Nadia’s family were killed in the conflict. She and her family now sleep on the roof of her brother’s home.

One day during the war, a man invited me to see the damage to his house in Gaza City. He led me up a crumbling stone staircase to the roof, where nine people, including six children, had been killed when a missile struck as they were making pizza. Only after we had inched our way down to the ground floor did he tell me that his wife and four children were among the dead. “I have lost everything,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rodian and Mohammed: ‘This wedding gift: what can I say? It’s ruined. All of our memories are gone.’ Rodian and Mohammed took refuge at his father’s apartment but lack kitchen equipment, water and food.

But some managed to retrieve a few possessions. These photographs, taken by the charity ActionAid in the days following the 25 August ceasefire, show a pitiful clutch of items cherished by their owners. In Gaza – after three wars in the past six years – you learn fast to hold tight to small things.

