Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, one of the leaders of a young generation of authors in Gaza who chose to write in English to tell their stories, was killed in an Israeli strike, his friends said.

“My heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family a few minutes ago,” wrote his friend, the Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha, on Facebook.

“I don’t want to believe this. We both loved to pick strawberries together.”

Alareer had said a few days after Israel began its ground offensive in October that he refused to leave northern Gaza, the epicentre of the fighting at the time, AFP reports.