Israeli airstrikes have levelled much of Gaza City in recent weeks, with the Palestinian Civil Defence saying at least 50 multi-storey buildings have been destroyed and thousands of residents forced to flee.
As the bombardment continues, Prime Time has been speaking with an Irish-Palestinian family in north Co Dublin, who are living with a constant knot of worry. Twenty of their relatives are in Gaza City, trying to find a way out.
For Nyssan Deeb and her loved ones, each ping of a phone could bring news of hunger, displacement, or worse, from their relatives trapped in the enclave.
"The texts are getting more desperate. What they're describing to us sounds, believe it or not, even more horrific," Nyssan says as she scrolls through the latest WhatsApp messages from her cousins in Gaza.
Stories of being fired upon while queuing for aid, living on limited soup and bread rations and relying on salt water for hydration feature in the steady flow of updates.
"They were issued evacuation orders only this morning with no place to go to," Nyssan says while sitting at her kitchen table.
Following a strike at the camp they were staying in, her relatives text to say that they’re just happy to be alive despite now being without shelter.
Nyssan is one of six siblings from Lusk, Co Dublin, whose father Abraham arrived in Ireland in 1975.
Abraham left his hometown of Gaza City in 1966, eventually meeting his future Irish wife Maeve while living in Spain.
After having their first child, Knel, they moved to Dublin and settled down. Abraham built his life in Ireland, but Gaza has remained a constant presence for his family ever since.
For the Deeb children, Gaza was never just a place on the news. Growing up, visits to their grandparents and extended family made it their reality.
"When we speak of Gaza, it was our grandad and our grandmother, Sido and Teta," Nyssan says. "Those memories are now so precious. When we were going in the car and we were driving to Deir al-Balah, and even just going around and seeing Gaza, being at the beach, going to the market. All so important."
She shows Prime Time home videos and photo albums that tell a story of family visits to crowded Gaza beaches and celebrations on the terrace.
Nyssan’s last visit to her grandparents’ house was in 1994, and while their home in Gaza City is still standing, it has not been completely spared by the war.
"A missile hit the side of it or the back of it, but it's barely livable. I don't want to really think about that if that goes. You're looking at it going, 'Is that it? Is Gaza being wiped off the planet?’"
While Nyssan’s grandparents have since passed, her cousins remain in Gaza City.
Four families - 20 people in all, including 13 children aged between four and 17 - are still there.
Contact is kept through a series of WhatsApp groups, including one focused on trying to support their evacuation in any way they can.
"We are talking to them about the evacuation, about the ages of the kids and who has passports, birth certs, all of that. They know it's complex and long and it's going to take time," Nyssan said.
"We've been in touch with a couple of solicitors, and they were just like, ‘The chances of this happening are next to nothing.’ But you can't just accept that as the final answer."
Behind the WhatsApp updates and evacuation plans is Abraham, whose memories of Gaza stretch back decades - his family arrived there in 1948 having been displaced from their home.
That year, a brewing conflict between Arabs and Jews erupted into a full-blown war. Forces from the newly-established State of Israel launched a major offensive which forced the permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population. Palestinians refer to the period as The Nakba.
It’s that history that makes the images on Abraham’s screen today feel even more personal. Some of what he sees triggers a deep sense of guilt.
"Guilt is a very difficult feeling to have. I haven't had a good night's sleep for the last couple of years, at least." Abraham says.
"When you sit down to have a meal and you're thinking about this food I have, and what's left over, and thrown in the bin, and I say, ‘My God, that's awful.’ There are people in Gaza who would love to have a bit of that food."
Those feelings don’t end with Abraham. For Nyssan, the ongoing siege of Gaza creates a feeling she says she hasn’t experienced before.
"I know what it feels like to be anxious and stressed. But this is hard to put into words. It's such an unsettling feeling in your heart. This is just so extreme," Nyssan says.
"I'm sitting here going, ‘Could you imagine bombs raining down on you, just down the road.’ And they can hear it so close. But I think that's what it boils down to. It's like they're children at the end of the day, and they could be our children."
Last Tuesday, the Israeli military issued an evacuation notice covering the area where some of Nyssan's cousins were living.
A message from one of her cousins over WhatsApp tells the story of a dire situation.
"The camp for displaced people where [my wife] and children are was bombed," the message read, "But thank God they had left the place minutes before the bombardment, and they are okay. They are now living without shelter, a home or a tent. Please keep them in your prayers that they are safe and well."
The children in question are aged 14, 11 and six.
"I don’t even know how to respond to it," Nyssan says quietly. "I’ve been sitting with that since he sent it to me yesterday."
The relentless nature of the war in Gaza alongside the passing of their much-loved brother Knel in 2023 has made the last few years a period of constant grief and heartache for the Deeb family.
Yet, Nyassan says, they have found moments to be thankful for too, including for what they see as broad support from their local communities for the Palestinian people.
"It's been fantastic. Me and my sisters always say this, ‘Thank God we live here.’ And my cousins [in Gaza] are even saying the Irish have been the most supportive worldwide," Nyssan said.
While she describes that Irish solidarity as heartwarming, Nyssan knows it doesn’t lessen the reality her family faces.
"Even that text I got off my cousin yesterday, they have no tent now. It's like, ‘How could things get actually any worse?’ But they'll send a text, they'll say the planes are flying really low overhead. You're like, ‘Jesus Christ, are they going to make it through the night?’ Is this going to be the night that they're going to die.
"Are we to assume it’s actually going to get worse, that they're all going to die? I don't know."
Jack McCarron’s report on this topic airs on the 16 September edition of Prime Time at 10.35pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.
