‘Help my brother first’: Gazan girl’s plea as entire family killed

Alma Jaroor, 12, was buried under the rubble of a five-storey building in downtown Gaza City for over three hours. In video recorded by a Palestinian rescuer, a shout comes from under mounds of smashed concrete. 3 months on, Alma tells the BBC her story, at length and in detail. Tarazan was 18 months old when he was killed.

His mother Alma was also killed. Her entire family was killed side-by-side. She is haunted by what she cannot unsee. She says: “I wish for death after seeing my brother like that,#34; Relatives say the building where they were sleeping was brought down by an Israeli air strike.

Only Tarazan#39;s body was recovered. There were 140 refugees [Gazans displaced by the war] in the building, and only some of the bodies have been found. Alma has found comfort with her uncle Sami#39;s family, but not safety. Like every child in Gaza, she could be killed at any minute.

Especially vulnerable are those in Rafah, where Israel continues to threaten a ground assault. She no longer cries all the time, she says, because she knows her parents are in heaven. Unicef says 13,000 children in Gaza have been killed by Israel since the war began. Health ministry officials in the Hamas-run territory say that the overall death toll in the war is at least 31,923 people.

Israel says it does all it can to minimise civilian casualties. Palestinians counter that many bombs have been dropped on residential buildings. At least 20,000 children have been orphaned by the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The real number may be higher, but that can#39;t be confirmed because of the difficulty and danger of accessing information in Gaza.

All Alma wants is to escape from Gaza and reach her grandmother, who lives abroad. I feel pain in my heart and it will stay with me for the rest of my life, because they were my family, my parents, my sister and brothers. And they were all gone, in one night.