On Monday, June 30, the Israeli army dropped a 230-kilogram bomb, without any warning, on the Al-Baqa café, on the seafront in Gaza City. The attack reduced the building to dust, carving a massive crater into the ground and killing around 40 people. The death toll from the massacre is still uncertain, as some bodies were seemingly carried away by the sea.
The Al-Baqa café, a nearly 40-year-old two-story venue, made out of wood and furnished with plastic chairs, had reopened its doors at the start of the year after being partially destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. It had become a refuge, one frequented both by families seeking a brief respite from the tent camps and by young professionals looking for a stable internet connection to work with.
A few days after the attack, the Israeli army claimed to have killed three alleged Hamas officials in the north of the Gaza Strip that day. When asked by Le Monde, the army refused to specify whether its targets had been in the café that afternoon. However, photojournalist Ismail Abu Hatab, illustrator Frans al-Salmi, boxer Malak Mesleh, and engineer Mohammed Abu Awda were, indeed, present. These four young people were killed in the explosion, and all of them embodied the resilience of Gazan society, which has been battered by 21 devastating months of war. Le Monde collected all of the testimonies in this article by phone, as Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
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