Photo of Gaza girl killed in Israeli attack wearing pink roller skates goes viral : NPR

For nearly a year, countless photos of dead and injured children have been streaming out of the Gaza Strip, revealing the toll of a war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

But one photo stood out this week, showing the body of a young girl wrapped in a white cloth and wearing pink roller skates. It was widely shared on social media and has become another iconic image of the war in Gaza, which UNICEF has called a “children’s graveyard.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry said more than 40,000 people have been killed by Israeli artillery fire in the war, a third of them children.

Ten-year-old Tala Abu Ajwa has managed to survive 332 days amid war, bombings, hunger and insecurity. She and her family have fled on foot from one place to another eight times in the past 11 months, sometimes in the middle of the night.

“She said to me, ‘Grandma, why can’t we live like the other kids?'” her father, Husam Abu Ajwa, told NPR by phone from Gaza City, the day after she died.

Attacking a building without warning

Near 5pm on Tuesday, the girl went downstairs to play outside with her 12-year-old brother, Salah, and just as she reached the first floor, an explosion shook the building.

Shrapnel cut through the air and pierced her neck. The Israeli airstrike hit an apartment in a building owned by the Kihir family, her father said.

“She was killed at the entrance to the building. I heard an airstrike and went down to look for her,” he said. It was the scene of a massacre. She died within minutes.

The Israeli military says it is taking precautions to minimise civilian deaths in its pursuit of Hamas, which launched an offensive on October 7 that has left some 1,200 people dead.

The Israeli military did not respond to NPR’s request for comment on why the residential building in Gaza City was attacked.

A photo symbolizes the toll of war on children in Gaza

Photographs from the hospital show Tara still wearing her pink roller skates, her body covered in white cloth. A man gently removes her skates and hands them to Tara’s father. Video shows her father crying in disbelief, and her mother crushed under Tara’s body.

“We are all in shock. We never imagined it,” her father said. “The other children are in shock too. It’s a nightmare,” he said. “Her mother, may God give her strength, is stunned. She can’t believe what has happened.”

Abu Ajwa said several children were wounded in the airstrike and remain in hospital, while eight others were killed, including his neighbour’s young son and the Kihir family – a couple, their three children and two of the children’s grandparents.

The girl with the pink skates who loved life

Before the war, Abu Ajwa was a high-school chemistry teacher, a job that enabled him to afford the basics as well as some extra luxuries for his eldest daughter, Tara.

“She had these roller skates on, and she really wanted me to buy them for her,” he said, “so I bought them for her, and that’s what killed her when she went down the stairs, thank God.”

“She loved to play. She loved life,” he said.

Tara is the middle child and the only girl in her family for most of her life, sandwiched between two brothers, until her youngest sister was born about a year ago.

Her father shared photos of their prewar family life with NPR: In one, Tara has her arms around her father’s neck in a swimming pool; in another, she’s decked out in a dress, headband, Daisy Duck sweater, and school uniform; in yet another, she’s covered in bubbles and laughing.

“Whatever she wants, I’ll get it for her,” Abu Ajwa said.

The Girl’s Last Wish and Greatest Fear

Abu Ajwa did his best to keep his family safe, but at night the sounds of Israeli airstrikes frightened Tara, who would run and curl up in his arms.

“She asked me, ‘Why are we living like this, with death and martyrs?’ And I told her, ‘When the war is over, we will go out and God will reward you,'” he said.

Abu Ajwa said that the day before she died, his daughter told him that she dreamed of becoming a dentist and going back to school. Most of Gaza’s schools have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to the United Nations. Children have not been to school for nearly a year, and classrooms have become overcrowded shelters for displaced families with nowhere else to go.

Tala also had one wish for September: to celebrate her younger brother’s fifth birthday with gifts and friends, a distraction from the war. Abu Ajwa promised to try.

“She was just a kid on roller skates, coming to play with other kids, just innocently,” he said, fighting back tears.

“She was killed by an airstrike weighing many tonnes,” he says, as the sounds of Israeli drones buzz overhead.

NPR’s Aya Batrawi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Ahmed Abu Hamda reported from Cairo.