‘She saw them burn’: Gaza girl ‘devastated’ after family killed in Israeli strike

A young girl with a short ponytail steps over shattered rubble, flames around her, trying to escape.

The five-year-old child in the viral footage, which showed the aftermath of an Israeli strikes on a Gaza City school sheltering displaced Palestinians, was Ward Jalal al-Sheikh Khalil.

Ward, who has spent nearly half her life surviving Israel’s war on Gaza, was fleeing the bombed classroom at the Fahmi al-Jerjawi school after witnessing her mother and four siblings burn to death.

“I received a phone call after midnight telling me the school where my brother and his family had taken shelter was bombed,” her uncle, Iyad Muhammed al-Sheikh Khalil, told Middle East Eye.

“I was horrified and wanted to rush there immediately, but I couldn’t. The bombing was still intense and it was completely dark.”

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