Sidra Hassouna

Sidra Karam Hassouna, five years old, was killed in the early hours of February 12, 2024, when Israeli airstrikes hit the one-story house her family was renting on the east side of Rafah. The family had fled their home in northern Gaza months earlier, among more than a million displaced people sheltering in the city. The strikes that night served as cover for an Israeli operation that rescued two hostages elsewhere in Rafah; at least 74 Palestinians were killed in the bombardment, among them 27 children, according to a list compiled by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and cited by the Associated Press.

The Associated Press interviewed Sidra’s uncle, Ibrahim Hasouna, the family’s sole survivor, who had spent the night at a friend’s house and returned to find the home reduced to rubble. He identified the bodies of his parents — his father Fawzi, an engineer — his two brothers, and the wife and three children of his brother Karam: five-year-old twin girls Suzan and Sedra (Sidra) and their one-year-old brother Malek.

A photograph of Sidra’s body, flung by the blast and left hanging from the wreckage of the building, spread across social media and was shared by Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK and a relative of the family, making her one of the most widely recognized child victims of the war. The Israeli military said the night’s bombardment was to cover the hostage extraction and did not comment on why specific sites across Rafah were targeted, according to AP.

Sources

• Airstrike from Israeli hostage rescue wipes out entire Palestinian family in Gaza border town — AP
• She was 7 years old. She shared my name. In Gaza, she died an unthinkable death — The Forward