After finishing her homework, Fatima al-Bayouk went to play with her cousins outside her grandmother’s home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, when an Israeli bullet struck her neck.
Moments later, the eight-year-old Palestinian girl returned home trembling, blood soaking her shirt. She screamed that her cousin had been shot, unaware that she had been hit herself.
The bullet had lodged in her lung. After a week in hospital, she died from her injuries.
For her grandmother, Safia Abo Amra, Bayouk - the sole survivor of her immediate family in an earlier Israeli air strike - was far more than a granddaughter. She had become her closest companion and the centre of her life.
“Fatima was my best friend. We did everything together, cooking, going on walks; we even slept on the same mattress. I have seven sons and six daughters, yet Fatima was more precious to me than all of them,” Abo Amra told Middle East Eye.
Gaza: Indiscriminate Israeli gunfire kills and terrorises displaced families
Eight-year-old Fatima al-Bayouk was killed after an Israeli bullet struck her neck while she was playing outside her grandmother's home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. Her death highlights the ordeal of displaced families living under the constant threat of indiscriminate gunfire.
Cross Lines newsroom
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Original source: Middle East Eye
