WARNING: This story contains a graphic image of death
Hussam Abu Ajwa, 43, holds two bloodstained pink rollerskates in his hands. They’re the last gift he ever bought his daughter, Tala.
The 10-year-old died on Sept. 4 in Gaza City while rollerblading in her neighbourhood. Her father says she was killed by an Israeli airstrike on a residential building near where the family lives.
An image of the child, wrapped in a white shroud with pink skates sticking out, went viral online soon after.
“That day, she insisted [on playing outside] and I agreed,” Abu Ajwa said in a video that was shared with CBC.
“But … the [Israeli] occupation’s missiles are faster than the kids who want to play and be happy.”
Over 10,000 children have been killed in the last 11 months of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which uses the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures. The numbers aren’t broken out by cause of death.
The Israel Defence Forces said it was “unaware of a specific strike” in the co-ordinates that CBC provided, but it did say it struck a “Hamas sniper from the Zeitoun battalion” that day in the general vicinity of that area.
“I hope to God that Tala’s blood has a role in stopping the war,” Abu Ajwa said.
“And Tala will be the last child to die without reason.”
‘All I could see was blood on her skates’
Tala is the latest of the casualties of the war, which started after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people and saw 250 hostages taken into Gaza, by Israeli figures. Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza has killed nearly 41,000 people, according to Palestinian counts.
Abu Ajwa lamented his decision to cave and let Tala go outside and play, but he told El Saife that they were in a safe area in the north, and he didn’t want to add to the child’s burdens as she lived through the war.
Tala Abu Ajwa, 10, died while rollerblading near her home in northern Gaza after a strike in the area. Her father, Hussam, described her as an energetic girl who loved to write and dreamed of peace, and said he hopes her death will not be in vain. ‘I hope that Tala’s blood and Tala’s martyrdom is what will stop this war, and it would be the end of the children who are martyred,’ he said.
While Tala was outside, Abu Ajwa said he heard an explosion, sending him running to find her. Along with a crowd that had formed to help, he pulled his daughter out of a pile of rubble.
“I went out … all I could see was blood on her skates.”
After the family found her body, they rushed her to a nearby hospital. Her little body lay on a stretcher, her jeans drenched in blood, skates still strapped to her feet. Doctors treated the child as her father sobbed.
Tala succumbed to her injuries, and died in the hospital shortly after arriving.
Videos of the little girl skating in circles in her neighbourhood quickly spread on social media, alongside photos, taken after her death, of her pink skates hanging out of the white shroud that contained her body.
“We want our kids to play like the children of the world, and be happy like the children of the world,” Abu Ajwa said.
On Aug. 27, OCHA said the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for more than 19 neighbourhoods in northern Gaza and in Deir al-Balah, where over 8,000 people are sheltering. Eighty-nine per cent of Gaza was under such an order as of Sept. 9, according to the UN office.
Among those sheltering in that area was Tala and her family. Abu Ajwa said they were displaced “seven or eight times,” going between friends’ and relatives’ houses, and even staying with strangers.
Each time, he said, he would try to convince Tala to only take the important things with her for the long road ahead. But with every displacement, Tala was adamant about having her skates with her.
“She would say, ‘No, I want to take the skates so I can play,'” he said. “She was very attached to her toys and her things.”
‘Simple dreams’
In the hospital courtyard, Tala’s body lay on the ground as her parents bid their final farewells to her. Her mother, Hadeel, embraced her, kissing her face as tears rolled down her own. She whispered to her, hoping for an answer that would never come.
Holding back tears, Abu Ajwa said his daughter wanted to be a dentist when she grew up so she could treat her father in his old age.
“‘It would be free, dad, don’t worry,'” he said she would tell him.
One of her favourite hobbies was writing letters, he said, which along with her younger brother, she would give to her father.
Her letters detailed her “simple dreams” of going for car rides, eating out and going to the beach.
“To other people, these are not dreams, these are basics,” he said. “[But] to the children of Gaza, these are dreams.
“And as you see, Tala’s dreams didn’t come true.”
