A three-year-old Palestinian girl survived a fire that broke out inside a residential flat targeted by an Israeli strike west of Gaza City at dawn on Wednesday, after field journalist Ali al-Jaafrawi entered the site amid flames and smoke and carried her out. He handed her to people who took her for medical treatment. Al-Jaafrawi documented the rescue in a video published on his social media accounts.
He said the girl was crying and trapped among the flames, while the intensity of the fire and smoke initially made it impossible to reach her. He eventually managed to enter the flat and carry her out, expressing hope that she would recover. Al-Jaafrawi said he works as a field journalist and is permanently based at al-Shifa Hospital to cover events.
Al-Jaafrawi tracks the site of the strike in western Gaza
He added that he was at the hospital at dawn on Wednesday when he heard an Israeli military helicopter flying overhead, saying his previous experience had led him to associate this type of flight with the possibility of residential flats being targeted. According to his account, the aircraft fired a missile, and he followed the sound and the location of the explosion until he reached al-Amin building on al-Nasr Street, where the strike took place.
He said he was the first to reach the site, even before the ambulance crews arrived. When he went up to the targeted flat, he found flames burning throughout it. He added that he entered despite the fire and smoke, then heard a girl screaming inside. He moved towards the sound, found her and rescued her immediately, before carrying her out and handing her to people there to take her to hospital.
Al-Jaafrawi did not leave the site after rescuing the girl. Instead, he returned to the burning flat in an attempt to reach other people while also documenting what had happened. But the intensity of the smoke and flames prevented him from completing his attempt. He said he was suffocated and lost consciousness because of the heavy smoke, and that he also saw a woman on fire inside the flat.
Further rescue attempts leave journalist suffocating
Al-Jaafrawi said he later learned that the girl was named Maryam Ahmad Ghanem and was three years old. He added that her father had been killed at the beginning of the war, while her mother was killed in the strike on the flat at dawn on Wednesday, leaving the girl alone, according to the information he gave in his account. The rescue video spread widely on social media, prompting bloggers and activists to discuss the situation of children in Gaza.
Some described the moments when flames and smoke mingled, noting that ambulance and civil defence crews had gone to the danger site to recover victims and rescue survivors, while the girl remained trapped in fear before being brought out. Bloggers asked what crime the girl had committed and questioned a childhood that found itself surrounded by flames instead of safety.
They wrote that children were paying the price of a war they had not chosen and that survival in Gaza had become a story told through tears. One person responding to the video described it as a scene from daily life in Gaza: a traumatised girl amid fire and smoke after her flat was bombed while she slept at 4am, waking to what he described as a hell she could not comprehend.
Followers describe the tragedy of Gaza's children
Others described what happened as a painful morning for a family that had lost its sense of safety, noting that a woman had been killed inside the flat while the girl survived. One follower focused on a cry heard in the recording saying that there were living children screaming.
He compared children waking in their family homes to prepare for a school day with the girl seen crying amid the fire, asking how a child could wake up seeking escape from death instead of asking for water or embracing their family.
