Out of the 2,200 Palestinians killed in last summer’s assault on the Gaza Strip, over 80 percent were civilians. Nearly 150 families lost three or more relatives, with some families disappearing entirely. Activestills’ Anne Paq returns to Gaza to tell the story behind the numbers.

Photography: Anne Paq / Activestills.org, Editing: Shiraz Grinbaum / Activestills.org

“Time will reduce the pain, but we will not forget our brothers”, told me 18-year-old Ibrahim Al Khalili in the midst of the burned ruins of the family factory, when I visited them in November 2014.

The entire immediate families of Ibrahim’s brothers, Ashraf and Ahmed, were killed: Ashraf’s wife, Nedaa’ (28) and their children Deema (4), Ziyad (3) and Mahmoud (8); as well as Ahmed’s wife, Aya (23), and their daughter Lama (5). A big fire broke out in the factory due to the plastic and wood materials stored there. The bodies were burned so badly that when they arrived to the morgue they were burned beyond recognition.

The eight members were the last ones waiting to be evacuated when an Israeli soldier fired a shell that fell on them. Seven-year-old Mahmoud was the only person who wasn’t killed on the spot; he remained conscious and witnessed the death of his entire family. At the Shifa hospital he fell into a coma, and died four days later.

I was at the morgue of the Al Shifa when the bodies arrived. One carbonized arm, unable to bend, was sticking out of the green plastic bag where the bodies were put before being taken for burial. In another plastic bag, three bodies, the one of a woman and two children, were glued together.

On that same day I stood outside the morgue and took a photo of Ismael, another Khalili brother, embracing someone while collapsing in tears. How can one forget such a scene of devastation? I tried to find out their names, and the location from which they arrived. Someone explained that this was the Al Khalili familiy from Al Tuffah. “They were unable to escape, and because of the factory, they were caught in the fire,” I was told, writing down the details. But in the chaos at hospital, flooded with constant flow of dead and injured, it was often impossible to even catch the family’s name.

The Khalilis were one of many families in the Gaza Strip that were obliterated last summer by Israeli attacks. According to the United Nations, 142 families lost three members or more in single Israeli strikes, a terrifying statistic. Some families, like those of Ahmad and Asfraf Al Khalili, were completely wiped out. Many families were gathered together during the offensive, which meant that any strike on someone’s home was even deadlier than usual, especially at night.

I went back to Gaza in September with the idea of documenting some of these families, starting with the ones I encountered during the summer. What happened to them? What remains of their memories, and how can the ones left behind go on with their life? What about the injured, the widows and the orphans left behind?

Long lists of names with ages of people was published, but I wanted to see the faces — to find the old photos from their photo albums. I wanted to get the stories out. I wanted these families to be remembered.

Read: What I learned touring the rubble piles of Gaza

Soon the project, called “Obliterated Families,” went beyond what I intended. In collaboration with Al Mezan Human Rights Center and, over the course of the following months, I visited and documented 50 families. Some may have lost a few loved ones, others, like the Abu Jame’ family, mourned the death of 25 members, of whom 18 were children. How can one cope with such immense loss?

The survivors’ suffering is only exacerbated by the fact that many of them are displaced — some still live in the ruins of their own homes — and have little prospect of any kind of justice or even a better future, due to the political stalemate and the siege.

One of the aims of the project is to raise awareness over these families and support their call for justice.

The Activestills photo collective is providing a selection of photos from the ”Obliterated Families” project for download for anyone who wants to expose the issue in their community. So far, street exhibits have been held in the France, Poland, Germany, South Africa, Luxembourg and the United States. These images have yet to be shown in Israel where the victims of the Gaza Strip were mostly excluded from the mainstream media and narrative, making them invisible and easily dismissed.

Al Mezan Human Rights center will publish the photo galleries on their website, while a web documentary focusing on 10 families — including the Khalili family — is in the works and is slated for release next month. The film’s introduction shows Ismael walking among the ruins of the homes. He walks and looks straight at the camera set on the roof. His gaze still haunts me. I will not forget, nor should any of us.

You can follow the project using the #ObliteratedFamilies hashtag.

Related:

UNRWA funding crisis puts 500k Palestinian children at risk

Permanent victims of war: Who remembers Gaza’s children?

A year after Gaza: The only lesson we can draw from Protective Edge