It was another day of war in Gaza, another day of what 19-year-old Palestinian TikTok star Medo Halimy called his “Tent Life”.

As he often did in videos documenting life’s mundane absurdities in the enclave, Halimy on Monday walked to his local Internet cafe — rather, a tent with Wi-Fi where displaced Palestinians can connect to the outside world — to meet his friend and collaborator Talal Murad.

They snapped a selfie — “Finally Reunited” Halimy captioned it on Instagram — and started catching up.

Then came a flash of light, 18-year-old Murad said, an explosion of white heat and sprayed earth. Murad felt pain in his neck. Halimy was bleeding from his head. A car on the coastal road in front of them was engulfed in flames, the apparent target of an Israeli airstrike. It took 10 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. Some hours later doctors pronounced Halimy dead.

“He represented a message,” Murad said on Friday, still recovering from his shrapnel wounds and reeling from the Israeli airstrike that killed his friend. “He represented hope and strength.”

The Israeli military didn’t respond to a request for comment on the strike.

Tributes to Halimy kept pouring in on Friday from friends as far afield as Harker Heights, Texas, where he spent a year in 2021 as part of an exchange programme sponsored by the state department.

“Medo was the life of the hangout ... humour and kindness and wit, all things that can never be forgotten,” said Heba al-Saidi, alumni coordinator for the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study program.

“He was bound for greatness, but he was taken too soon.”