One family. One attack. 132 names. A Gaza investigation

An Israeli strike on a Gaza apartment building killed 132 members of one family last October. It was one of the deadliest Israeli strikes of the Israel-Hamas war. The few survivors documented the dead.

It has been difficult to chronicle the enormous losses to Palestinian families during Israel’s offensive in Gaza, one of the most destructive in recent history.

Working with journalists in Gaza, we reconstructed what happened to one large family in a single moment.

On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage, according to Israeli government figures.

In response, Israel launched an offensive against Hamas in Gaza, killing nearly 50,000 people in more than a year of war, according to Gaza health officials.

The Abu Naser family owned and lived in an apartment building in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza. Their building was hit on Oct. 29, 2024, just months before a ceasefire. The family says more than 200 people were gathered in the building that night.

The day after the strike, the Israeli military said it had targeted an “enemy spotter” acting as a lookout on the roof and posing a threat to Israeli forces. The military declined to release visual evidence.

We spoke with one of the few survivors.

Read the full visual narrative, which includes a reconstruction of what happened the night of the strike and in the aftermath, the Israeli military’s response, a detailed family tree mapping out the extent of the family’s loss, satellite imagery and drone video from the family’s neighborhood