FLASH
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On Thursday, October 19, as the Israel-Hamas war entered its 12th day, at around 06:30 Israeli intelligence called Mahmoud Shaheen, warning him of bombings in the area where he lived.
The BBC has brought dentist Mahmoud Shaheen's account of the dawn of that day, when he had in hand the saving of hundreds of people's lives.
Delivering medical supplies, Red Cross convoy attacked in Gaza
That morning he was in his third-floor, three-bedroom apartment in al-Zahra, an area in the north of the Gaza Strip, which until then it had been largely untouched by airstrikes.
Mahmoud Shaheen had heard a noise coming and going outside the building. People were screaming. "You must run," shouted someone in the street, "because they are going to bomb the towers."
As he left his building and crossed the street, looking for a safe place, he received a call from a private number.
"I'm talking to you from Israeli intelligence," a man said on the line, according to Mahmoud.
That call would last more than an hour and would be the scariest call of his life.
"We're going to bomb three towers."
The voice addressed Mahmoud by his full name and spoke in perfect Arabic.
"He told me he wanted to bomb three towers... and ordered me to evacuate the surrounding area."
Mahmoud's tower was not directly under threat, but he was suddenly responsible for evacuating hundreds of people. "I had people's lives in my hands," he says.
He told the man, who identified himself as Abu Khaled, not to hang up. As a 40-year-old dentist, Mahmoud says he has no idea why he was chosen for this job. But that day, he did everything he could to keep his community safe.
Guided by the voices of strangers who always seemed to know how to reach him even when his battery died, he pleaded for the bombing to stop and shouted for people to flee.
He led a mass evacuation of his neighbors and then watched his neighborhood explode before his eyes.
During this conflict, the Israeli military sometimes called Gazans to warn them before airstrikes, Mahmoud gives an insight into such a call in an unprecedented level of detail.
Mahmoud couldn't believe it when the man started talking, he recalls. People around him warned that the call could be fake. Since the start of the war, messages had circulated on the community Facebook group warning of hoax calls and offering tips on identifying real Israeli evacuation orders.
Mahmoud asked the voice on the phone to fire a warning shot to prove this was true. And maybe a drone hit one of the apartment blocks under threat, he says.
"I asked him to 'fire one more warning shot before they bomb,'" says Mahmoud. And another rang.
Now that Mahmoud knew it was true, he tried to stop, asking the man to be patient. "I told him: "Don't betray us and don't bomb while the people are being evacuated."
The man said he would give Mahmoud time — he said he didn't want anyone to die, the dentist recalled.
Mahmoud replied that he didn't want anyone to get hurt. He continued the call as he rushed through the neighborhood, urging people to evacuate. A neighbor recalls the dentist "just screaming," then others joined in.
Hundreds of people took to the streets that morning. Residents of this usually peaceful town were screaming and running, some of them wearing their pajamas or prayer clothes.
The area, north of the Wadi Gaza River, a point Israel has ordered civilians to move south from in the early days of the war, consisted of modern apartment blocks as well as shops, cafes, universities, schools, and parks. It was in these parks that people began to gather.
Mahmoud could not understand why his neighborhood had been targeted. "I tried to stop him. I asked him, 'Why do you want to bomb?'
He said: "There are some things that we see and you don't." The man did not explain what he meant.
"It's an order from people bigger than you and me, and we have an order to bomb," the voice added, according to Mahmoud.
When the areas around the buildings were cleared, the man informed Mahmoud that the bombing would begin.
Mahmoud panics - what if they bomb the wrong building by mistake? An Israeli plane circled overhead.
Mahmoud stared at the three towers attached to his apartment block. Then one of them was bombed.
"This is the tower we want, stay away," the man said on the phone as the building fell, according to Mahmoud.
The other two blocks were then demolished. Images taken in al-Zahra that morning show the rubble at the site of those three apartment blocks, while a video shows residents wandering around shocked and confused as they see the immediate aftermath of the strikes. A post on the community Facebook group at 08:28 local time said three towers were "completely wiped out".
When the bombing stopped, Mahmoud remembers the voice telling him: "We're done... you can go back."
Mahmud did not understand what he had just seen. He had lived in this Gaza neighborhood for 15 years, running a busy dental clinic and raising his children there.
People sought shelter or places to flee. Local authorities began clearing debris from the streets and extinguishing fires in the ruins.
But later that day, another call from an evidence number again asked him to evacuate the residents of the area, as many buildings would be evacuated. He had two hours to evacuate people in 20 tower blocks and hundreds of homes.
Mahmoud says what he and his neighbors witnessed that night "wasn't a small bombardment", but "complete destruction of buildings", as blocks of flats were flattened one by one.
"It was a very difficult night for all the people of al-Zahra." Photos and video footage posted by community residents show the aftermath of the evening bombing.
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