'His family is gone' One year after Israeli airstrike, boy tries to adjust to life alone

Omar Abu al-Ouf is revising for his final school exams, hoping to do well enough to pursue his dream of becoming an engineer, but it's difficult for the 17-year-old to focus.

- Bethan McKernan, Hazem Balousha

His mind constantly drifts to his family, all of whom died last year when an Israeli airstrike destroyed their apartment building in a middle-class neighbourhood of Gaza City.

"It's like he goes somewhere else,” says his grandmother Manar in the living room of the boy's uncle's house, where Omar now lives. “His whole family is gone, for nothing."

Omar spent 12 hours under the collapsed building, his arm around the body of his 12-year-old sister, Tala. His brother Tawfik, 17, was still alive. They talked to each other in the darkness. Tawfik told Omar their mother, Reem, was dead; before rescue teams could reach them, Tawfik too died from his injuries. Their father, Ayman, an internal medicine specialist at Gaza's main hospital, was also killed in the attack.