They are the early hours of Monday 26 May. An air raid that Israel says it is aimed at a militant control center has just hit a former school where dozens of families were shelter. 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 toll of the war on Gaza’s youngest. We have interviewed witnesses and obtained a non -published video from 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 family members. Parts of her body are heavily burned. Hussein Mohsen, who runs one of the ambulance services of Gaza, was the one who saved Hanin and helped to confirm her identity. Mohsen said that a metal door, red hot from the burning heat he separated from the girl. We found that Hanin recovered from burns for the second and third degrees in the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in northern Gaza. When the Israeli military operations intensified last month, she and her family took shelter at the school. Hanan’s uncle, who is a trained nurse, now takes care of her. Another young girl, Ward Al-Sheikh Khalil, who was mistaken in some media reports, while the person walking through the flames was also injured in the attack. Mohsen told us that he also saved her from a stack of rubble. Ward, who is five, was interviewed later that day by a journalist who worked for Turkey’s news agency. She spoke about how her mother and five brothers and sisters were killed in the strike. According to the Gaza Emergency Services, they belonged to a total of 31 victims. It is unclear whether the dead include hunters or militants. Hamas has previously hidden among citizens. The Israeli army did not go out when it was contacted by the New York Times to the details of the attack. It referred to his only public statement about the attack and said that in his attempt to hit a militant command and control center, it had taken countless steps to limit the risk of harming citizens, including the use of precise ammunition. Our analysis of the AfMat images showed fragments of a guided American bomb that the Israeli army consistently used in Gaza. The GBU-39s are designed to achieve goals with greater accuracy. At this school location, more than half of the victims were children, which contributed to a growing part of the dead among the youngest generation in Gaza. The Israeli army also refused to elaborate on the choice of the weapon and the large number of victims in children. Hanin is confronted with a long recovery. For now she continues to heal with her uncle by her side.
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