A Palestinian Reporter Returns Home to Gaza City

Up First from NPR

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4.5 • 52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

Anas Baba is NPR's eyes and ears on the ground in Gaza. He's also one of the only Palestinian journalists working full time for an American news organization in Gaza. Israel has banned international journalists from independent access to the territory throughout this war. But Baba is from Gaza City, and he chose to stay and report when the war began. Today on The Sunday Story, what it's like to cover the war while also living through it.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Aisha Roscoe, and you're listening to The Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news to bring you one big story.
0:08.5	If you've been listening to NPR's reporting on Gaza over the past year and a half, there's a name you've likely heard.
0:15.5	NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba.
0:17.4	With N.S. Baba in Khan Yunus Gaza.
0:19.5	That was NPR producer, N.S. Baba. Anas is one With Ennis Baba in Khan Yunus Gaza. That was NPR producer, Anas Baba.
0:22.0	Anas is one of the only Palestinian journalist in Gaza working full-time for an American news organization.
0:30.8	He's from Gaza City, and he's been NPR's eyes and ears on the ground.
0:36.4	He sends dispatches from hospitals, displacement camps, and
0:40.5	bomb sites. Dust everywhere, the boulder of the guns and the explosions all over the air.
0:47.5	Wherever you put your eye to the horizon, it's the same. Destruction everywhere.
0:54.3	Anis does all of this with little more than a cell phone.
0:57.6	He works closely with a team of NPR journalists who've been covering this war from outside of Gaza.
1:04.2	Israel has banned international journalists from independent access to Gaza since Hamas's deadly attack on October 7th,
1:11.9	2023.
1:13.4	On January 19th of this year, a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect.
1:19.8	The ceasefire permitted Palestinians to return to the north of Gaza.
1:24.4	And today, we are returning.
1:27.1	Hundreds of thousands of people, literally Hundreds of thousands of people.
1:29.4	Literally hundreds of thousands of people.
1:31.9	Anas Baba was one of them.
1:34.7	Nothing is still the same.
1:38.1	Gonna keep reporting here.
	...

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