An American with family in Gaza told CNN Wednesday that his elderly mother has been told to evacuate her home due to imminent bombings by Israel—only to find out that those warnings were actually “prank calls.” Hani Almadhoun, who works at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, has lost 14 members of his extended family due to the airstrikes as of last Saturday, he claimed. Those who are still alive are “not doing too well,” he told The Source anchor Kaitlan Collins. “I have two sisters sheltering inside a hospital right now. One sister is in a school…I have the family just staying in the heart of the evacuation zone, unable to move around. They have very little resources right now.” Almadoun said of his 71-year-old mother’s stressful experience: “She has no place to go. They get prank calls at night—’evacuate your house, you’re going to get bombed’—then, ‘Oh, sorry, we’re just joking around.’ It’s not human to do that.”
