Burning children alive: The story of a 5-year-old girl pulled from charred ruins in Gaza

By Maryam Qarehgozlou

In a haunting video, the silhouette of a young girl emerges, stumbling through the charred ruins of Gaza City’s Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School – engulfed in flames after a devastating Israeli airstrike.

Five-year-old Ward Al-Sheikh Khalil was seen desperately trying to flee the burning building, where she and her family had been sleeping, when the attack took place late Monday night.

The school had been transformed into a shelter for displaced families amid the ongoing Israeli-American genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip, which has claimed the lives of more than 53,000 Palestinians since October 2023, the majority of them women and children.

Though emergency crews managed to rescue Ward, her mother and five siblings, aged two to eighteen, were consumed by the uncontrollable flames that spread terrifyingly.

Her father and another brother are currently hospitalized in critical condition, with some reports indicating that Ward’s father may now be her only surviving relative.

Footage doing the rounds on social media showed Ward being carried by a paramedic.

In the haunting video, the man asks about her mother, and Ward silently points toward the destroyed building. When asked about her brother, she looks confused, unaware of his fate.

Another video showed Ward in the arms of a journalist, recounting the horror: “They killed my family,” she said, looking visibly terrified.

"I was scared of the fire," Ward was quoted as saying on Monday, after being rescued and treated in a hospital in Gaza. "The whole school was burning up."

Hussein Mohsen, a paramedic in Gaza, described the harrowing rescue efforts at the shelter school, which was struck around 2 a.m. local time.

He said rescue crews initially struggled to access the site, but once inside, they immediately began searching for survivors beneath the searing rubble.

"The rubble was scorching hot, and she [Ward] was underneath," Mohsen said. "She wasn’t talking or screaming. We just noticed her foot moving; nothing else was moving."

According to Mohsen, Ward was likely trapped for 15 to 30 minutes before rescuers were able to pull her from the wreckage and rush her to the hospital.

Ward’s uncle, Ayad Al-Sheikh Khali,l said when he arrived at the scene, he found his brother's family's bodies “all charred and cut up," as he held Ward in his arms.

Mohsen, Ward, and her uncle Sheikh Khalil have verified that Ward is indeed the child seen in the video circulating on social media since Monday.

Ward miraculously survived, but Mohsen said emergency crews witnessed dozens of severely burned bodies at the site, the majority of which were children.

Mohsen highlighted the limited resources available for recovery efforts, forcing rescuers to use their bare hands to search for survivors and recover bodies.

"I was placing three bodies of children in one body bag because of the shortage of body bags on hand," he said. "I would place two or four [bodies], or I would place a mother and her children in one body bag."

Social media images depicted what appeared to be badly burned bodies being retrieved from the rubble. Other footage from the scene revealed blood-stained walls, charred mattresses, and distraught parents searching for their loved ones alongside rescue workers.

According to Gaza health officials, the deadly overnight strike killed at least 36 people and injured more than 50, including women and children, who had been displaced by the ongoing 19-month genocidal war and were sheltering inside the school.

The Gaza government media office reported that 18 of the victims were children. It condemned the strike as a “brutal massacre,” slamming the Israeli regime for “deliberately and systematically” targeting shelters for displaced people in a flagrant violation of international and humanitarian laws, and “in a blatant attempt to inflict the largest possible number of civilian casualties.”

The office further called the attack “a direct extension of the crime of ethnic cleansing and genocide,” against the Palestinian people.

Shortly after the strike, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) issued a statement warning that shelters in Gaza are “overwhelmed” with displaced civilians seeking refuge, stressing that “no place is safe and no area has been spared.”

The agency added that many families are now taking refuge in “abandoned, unfinished, or damaged buildings,” while others, including children and pregnant women, are forced to sleep in the open.

Israel’s military acknowledged targeting the school but, as it has repeatedly done over the past 590 days of war in Gaza, claimed, without providing evidence, that the building was being used as a "command and control center" by Gaza-based resistance movements Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Palestinian media outlets reported that no warning was issued before the attack. Under international humanitarian law, targeting civilian infrastructure is strictly prohibited.

However, Israel has consistently bombed schools and shelters across Gaza, where nearly 90 percent of the territory’s 2.3 million residents are now displaced.

In the aftermath of the latest tragedy, social media was flooded with images and videos of young Ward engulfed in flames.

Many users urged others to imagine if it were their own child, calling for empathy and action. The footage quickly became a symbol of the broader humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza.

Public outrage also intensified online, with growing condemnation of Israel’s continued impunity and of governments seen as complicit in what some users described as the systemic "burning of children alive."

British Member of Parliament Zarah Sultana took to X (formerly Twitter) to denounce the UK’s political establishment and media for their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Sharing a harrowing image of little Ward, who survived an Israeli strike on a Gaza school-turned-shelter, Sultana wrote:

“This photo should be on the front page of every major British newspaper. But it won’t be — because, like the political class, they’re complicit. It’s their genocide too.”

Assal Rad, a US-based scholar of West Asian history and prominent social media influencer, also condemned the systemic nature of Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestinians across Gaza and the occupied West Asia.

She said these actions reveal Israel's intent to eradicate Palestinian existence, emphasizing instances of children being burned alive in Gaza, anti-Arab chants in occupied al-Quds, and forced displacement in the occupied West Bank.

“In Gaza, they’re burning children alive. In Jerusalem [al-Quds], they’re chanting ‘Death to Arabs.’In the West Bank, they’re terrorizing Palestinians to force them off their land. What more do you need to see before admitting Israel’s goal is eradicating Palestinian existence?” She wrote.

In another post, Rad criticized mainstream media for normalizing the burning of Palestinian children alive and allowing the Israeli regime to commit such atrocities with impunity.

“Yesterday, I saw the charred bodies of children. Today, I saw the charred bodies of children.“ISRAEL IS BURNING CHILDREN ALIVE” should be the top headline of every outlet, but Israel can do it day after day without consequence. How can you normalize burning children alive?”

Khalil Sayegh, Founder and Executive Director of Agora Initiative, which provides accurate information on Palestine, directly linked support for Israel with condoning the burning of children alive.

He stressed that this practice has become a recurring tactic employed by the Israeli military in Gaza, not a one-off event.

“Supporting Israel = supporting the burning of children alive. It’s as simple as that. Burning children alive has become a practice of the Israeli military in Gaza—not a one-off event.”

Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, also expressed deep distress on X over the inhumane treatment of Palestinians.

Recalling the numerous images of burning children in Gaza, Albanese pleaded for an end to the massacre.

“I’ve seen the silhouettes of so many people—so many children—burning alive, that I can’t look at fire anymore without feeling sick to my stomach. WE MUST STOP THIS MASSACRE. May the Palestinians forgive us.”

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