Photo: Yasser Qudih/Xinhua
GAZA CITY, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- Nasir Mahdi, a Palestinian living in Gaza, is gripped by anxiety and fear as he has had no contact with his family in Gaza City for more than a week due to a communication blackout. Electricity has been cut off in the coastal enclave.
"I called my family every day to see how they were doing. But I have lost all contact with them ... I fear for their fate," said the 55-year-old father of four, who is currently living in a makeshift tent on a street in the southernmost city of Rafah. For more than three months he has been forced to live in conditions of conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Mahdi sat with his sons and grandchildren to the sound of explosions caused by Israeli airstrikes, glancing at his mobile phone from time to time in the hope that telecommunications services would return any moment.
"It is too hard to wait for news about my family and relatives without knowing whether they survived the Israeli attacks," he said. "My body is here, but my thoughts are with my daughters in Gaza City ... I cannot bear any more losses."
For Mohammed Sami, a Palestinian currently living in the West Bank city of Ramallah, all attempts to contact his sons and daughters in Rafah have been unsuccessful.
Three days before the conflict broke out, he left Gaza for medical treatment in the West Bank and fortunately escaped the bloody fighting. But now the 62-year-old father of six is haunted by the anxiety of the almost complete breakdown of communication in Gaza.
"The only means of communication between us was cut off ... I don't know if they survived the intense Israeli airstrikes," he said.
In an effort to find news about his family, Sami spends all his time in front of the TV to watch all the information regarding Gaza.
"I prayed a lot that I would not hear the names of my family members among the victims," he said.
Palestinian telecommunications companies operating in the Gaza Strip announced on 12 January a communications blackout in most parts of the besieged enclave, the ninth such blackout since 7 October 2023.
Continued outages of telecommunications and internet services "will cause disasters that threaten the lives of citizens", Ismail Tawabta, head of the media office of the Hamas-run Gaza government, told Xinhua news agency. "No one will be able to contact victims or ambulances, which could increase the number of casualties."
Thawabta also called on international organisations to "put pressure on Israel to restore communications services and put an end to this recurring and continuous tragedy".
Xinhua/GN.CZ-JaV_07
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