As rescuers sifted through the wreckage of a collapsed apartment building in Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday, a faint cry pierced the debris – a baby’s voice, fighting to be heard.
Then, a breakthrough. Shouts of “God is great!” echoed as a man emerged from the rubble, sprinting with a tiny survivor wrapped in a blanket.
He rushed her into the arms of paramedics, who quickly assessed her fragile condition.
The baby girl had survived.
But her parents and brother had not.
They perished in the overnight Israeli airstrike.
“When we asked people, they said she is a month old and had been under the rubble since dawn,” said Hazen Attar, a civil defense-first responder. “She had been screaming and then falling silent from time to time until we were able to get her out a short while ago, and thank God she is safe.”
The girl was identified as Ella Osama Abu Dagga.
She had been born 25 days earlier, during a tenuous cease-fire that many Palestinians in Gaza had hoped would mark the end of a war that has devastated the enclave, killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly its entire population.
Only the girl’s grandparents survived the attack.
Killed were her brother, mother and father, along with another family that included a father and his seven children.
Rescuers digging through the rubble could be seen pulling out the small body of a child sprawled on the mattress where he had been sleeping.
It was not immediately clear who would take in the rescued infant girl.
Israel resumed heavy strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, shattering the truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages.
Israel blamed the renewed fighting on Hamas, saying the group rejected a new proposal for the second phase of the cease-fire that differed from the agreement mediated by the U.S., Qatar and Egypt.
Nearly 600 people have been killed in Gaza since then, including more than 400 on Tuesday alone, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Health officials said most of the victims were women and children.
The strike that destroyed the infant girl’s home hit Abasan al-Kabira, a village just outside Khan Younis near the border with Israel, killing at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead.
It was inside an area the Israeli military ordered evacuated earlier this week, encompassing most of eastern Gaza.
The Israeli military claims it only targets Hamas members and blames civilian deaths on the group because it is deeply embedded in residential areas.
The military did not immediately comment on the overnight strikes.
Hours later, the Israeli military restored a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City, that it had maintained for most of the war but had lifted under the cease-fire deal.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had returned to what remained of their homes in the north after a cease-fire took hold in January.
The latest conflict began following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 incursion on southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage.
Israel’s blistering retaliatory air and ground offensive has killed nearly 49,000 Palestinians since then, more than half of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Israel says it has killed around 20,000 Hamas members but has not provided evidence.
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