(20 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Khan Younis, Gaza Strip – 20 March 2025
1. Various of woman sitting on the ground, cradling 25-day-old baby girl, Ella Abu Dagga, who survived an Israeli airstrike that targeted her home and killed her family
2. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Fatima Abu Dagga, Ella’s grandmother:
"The only survivor and her entire family were martyred. Her uncles, her father, her mother, and her brother. If you saw her brother, he would be like the moon. My beloved Omar, may God have mercy on you."
3. Various of Ella sleeping in her grandmother’s arms
4. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Nabil Abu Dagga, a relative of Ella’s family who lives nearby:
"We were shocked that she was still alive. They were going out to the adults who appeared, and they heard the baby crying downstairs. They found her crying and took her out, thank God. People were enjoying the nights of Ramadan and having Suhoor (pre-dawn meal) together in a family gathering, and it happened at the wrong time. The bombing was a surprise to everyone. It was a shock that no one could have imagined. No one could have imagined that a human being could kill another person in this way."
5. People carrying bodies and placing them on the ground
6. Various of people praying for victims
7. Various of ruin of Ella’s house where her family were killed
STORYLINE:
As rescuers dug through the remains of a collapsed apartment building in Gaza’s Khan Younis on Thursday, they could hear the cries of a baby from underneath the rubble.
Suddenly, calls of “God is great” rang out. A man sprinted away from the wreckage carrying a living infant swaddled in a blanket and handed her to a waiting ambulance crew. The baby girl stirred fitfully as paramedics checked her over.
Her parents and brother were dead in the overnight Israeli airstrike.
The girl was identified as Ella Osama Abu Dagga. She had been born 25 days earlier, in the midst of a tenuous ceasefire 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.
The child’s grandmother, Fatima Abu Dagga, sat with a group of other women in a relative’s house Thursday, taking turns cradling the infant.
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 because the militant group rejected a new proposal for the second phase of the ceasefire that departed from their signed agreement, which was mediated by the United States, 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 of 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.
Nabil Abu Dakka, a relative of Ella’s family who lives nearby, rushed to the scene of the strike.
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