The girl who died still wearing her rollerskates after Gaza missile strike | ITV News
The girl who died still wearing her rollerskates after Gaza missile strike | ITV News
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00:00camps in the occupied West Bank after a 10-day operation which saw dozens of
00:04Palestinians and an activist from the United States killed. The main focus was
00:10on the Jenin camp with Israel saying it was targeting militants. It comes as
00:14further Israeli airstrikes struck parts of Gaza. One of them hit a housing block
00:19in Gaza City on Tuesday where 10-year-old Palestinian girl Tala Abu
00:24Ajwa was playing outside on her rollerblades with friends. And a warning
00:29that this report from our correspondent Rachel Younger contains images of Tala
00:33which you may find upsetting.
00:37She's floored by grief. Her world pulled out from under her. Oblivious to
00:42everything but the loss of her daughter still holding one of the pink
00:45rollerblades Tala was playing in when she died. The doctors fighting to save
00:50her had no time to remove them until there was nothing more left they could
00:54do. A little while later Tala's dad Hussam is still holding her skates as he
01:00makes the phone calls every parent most fears. She was martyred he sobs. Killed
01:10on the front door of our home.
01:13I am Palestinian. I live in Gaza.
01:17This is Tala practicing her English. At 10 years old she had a lifetime to
01:22perfect a language she knew was a gateway to a life outside Gaza. But at
01:27tea time on Tuesday all she wanted in the world was to be allowed out on the
01:31street with her friends.
01:37This is what happened next. Chaos in the aftermath of an Israeli strike. The lower
01:44part of Tala's building was hit. She was caught by falling rubble. Her friend
01:49injured. Her three-year-old neighbor dead. Her mom Hadil hadn't wanted to let her
01:55outside. My neighbor told me my children are downstairs let her go play with them
02:03she says. I said okay go down for a bit and come back. Tala shouted yay she was
02:08so happy and so she went down and the strike came. But how can any parent keep
02:15a child safe when the streets outside look like this. In ordinary times the
02:20little girl who won certificates of excellence would have been busy with the
02:24start of a new school year. But after 11 months there's no chance of schools
02:29reopening here. Her ambition was just to go back to school and for her
02:36backpack to be filled with books again instead of clothes for every time we're
02:40displaced says her mom. I bought her a new backpack but she just put clothes in it
02:44again. She always prayed that the war would be over and we would leave Gaza
02:51and I would say God willing when the war is over well the war is over for her now
02:57she is in heaven. A little girl whose skates offered a brief escape from the
03:04war killed as she played with her friends. And Rachel is in Tel Aviv tonight.
03:11Rachel Israel's military operation in the occupied West Bank does appear to be
03:16ending. What if anything does that do for hopes of peace? Well quite frankly I
03:22don't think it moves on those hopes of peace and those stalled ceasefire talks
03:27at all. Just take a look at some of the devastation that the Israeli military
03:32left behind them in Djinni. Now we're used to seeing destruction of this scale
03:36aren't we? We've become almost shockingly accustomed to it over the past 11 months
03:40in Gaza but this is the West Bank where crucially Hamas the militant group that
03:45Israel is at war with are not in power. Now the Israeli military have told us
03:50this was a necessary counterterrorism operation. They say it was designed to
03:54arrest militants and to prevent further attacks but our team spent time in the
03:58West Bank last week and we're told again and again by Palestinians there that
04:02they were increasingly fearful the war in Gaza would spread out that they would
04:06be next and certainly since the war began back in October they have
04:10increasingly had their freedom of movement curtailed and there have been
04:15more and more incidents of settler violence. Now protesting against that
04:19cost one American activist a woman called Ashana Agee her life today. She
04:25was shot during a demonstration, a protest that the Israeli military say
04:28was putting their forces in danger although they say they are now
04:32investigating that particular incident but it is a cycle of violence that young
04:37Tala in Gaza was so desperate to escape and I think the question that Israel is
04:42facing more and more now from various quarters internationally is whether
04:46destruction of this scale can be proportionate to their stated aim of
04:51destroying Hamas or whether there is possibly an unspoken goal here of making
04:56parts of the Palestinian territories uninhabitable all of that making these
05:01peace talks and the resumption of them in any hope of peace seeming further
05:05away than ever as they go on tonight.
05:08Right Rachel in Tel Aviv thank you.