‘Dear Girl, Get Out!’: A Young Palestinian Escapes an Israeli Strike

It’s the early hours of Monday, May 26. An airstrike that Israel says is aimed at a militant control center has just hit a former school where dozens of families were sheltering. Eighteen children were killed in the attack, according to the local emergency services. And this scene — — of a girl trying to escape the flames is about to become a new symbol of the war’s toll on Gaza’s youngest. We interviewed witnesses and obtained unpublished video of the aftermath of the attack. And we found the girl. Her name is Hanin al-Wadie. The 5-year-old survived but lost both her parents and her younger sister in the attack, according to other relatives. Parts of her body are badly burned. Hussein Mohsen, who runs one of Gaza’s ambulance services, was the one who rescued Hanin and helped confirm her identity. Mohsen said that a metal door, red hot from the scorching heat separated him from the girl. We found Hanin recovering from second- and third-degree burns at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza. When Israeli military operations intensified last month, she and her family took shelter at the school. Hanin’s uncle, who is a trained nurse, is taking care of her now. Another young girl, Ward al-Sheikh Khalil, who was mistaken in some media reports as the one running through the flames, was also injured in the attack. Mohsen told us he also rescued her from a pile of rubble. Ward, who is five, was interviewed by a journalist working for Turkey’s state news agency later that day. She talked about how her mother and five siblings were killed in the strike. They were among 31 victims in total, according to the Gaza emergency services. It’s unclear if the dead included fighters or militants. Hamas has hidden among civilians before. The Israeli army didn’t elaborate when contacted by The New York Times on the details of the attack. It referred to its only public statement on the attack, saying that in its effort to strike a militant command and control center, it had taken numerous steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions. Our analysis of the aftermath imagery showed fragments of a guided American bomb that the Israeli military has consistently used in Gaza. The GBU-39s are designed to strike targets with greater accuracy. At this school site, more than half of the victims were children, adding to a growing share of deaths among the youngest generation in Gaza. The Israeli military also declined to elaborate further on the choice of the weapon and the high number of casualties among children. Hanin is facing a long recovery. For now, she continues to heal with her uncle by her side.