Gaza: BBC reporter and family left homeless again after Israel air strike warning

Many Palestinians have been fleeing to southern Gaza to escape bombing by Israel

It was just before 3pm in Gaza on Tuesday. I was preparing to go live on BBC TV News when I received a call from my wife - almost in tears, the kids crying in the background.

They'd been told to leave the apartment we'd been staying in because of a warning the Israeli air force was going to bomb next door.

I told her to grab the children and leave immediately. My colleague Mahmoud was nearby and I rang him to ask him to help.

For the second time in five days, my family was fleeing - running from the bombing.

On Friday, we had packed up our house in Gaza City, after the Israelis told everybody in northern Gaza to move south for their own safety.

We moved with my father-in-law and my wife's sister and their families. Like thousands of other families, we drove to the city of Khan Younis. We spent hours and hours looking for anywhere we could stay.

It wasn't easy. An already crowded city of 400,000 people was swelling to take in more than a million.

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Finally, we found a house where the owners agreed to let us share with another family. We thought the neighbourhood Al Amal looked busy, had a bakery and a pharmacy and that we would be safe because it had so many people in it.

Together with the other families in the building, we helped each other find water and food.

But then the owner of the building said he had received a phone call. The caller identified themselves as an Israeli soldier, checked the owner's name and said the building should be evacuated because the building next door (only a metre away) was going to be destroyed.

We all left straight away and got to a safe distance leaving many of our possessions. It was impossible to know when Israel would bomb, in five minutes or the next day.

I told the family to go to the Red Cross (ICRC) hospital, about 700 metres away, just to be sure.

So now we are homeless again. I've knocked on the door of a house near the hospital and have asked the family inside to look after my wife and children for a few hours, so I can work out what to do next.

Honestly, I don't know what to do - it is hard to be a reporter and try to look after my family like this. I struggle to find food and water for them. We now don't have a home.

I've covered the previous wars in Gaza but this is the first time my family has been so affected.

I can cope when I'm in danger but when your family is too, you feel guilty.