“My Daughter Went Out to Learn, Not to Fight”: Gaza Grieves More Children Killed by Israel
As the world’s attention has shifted to Iran and Lebanon over the past six weeks, Israel has been able to continue its genocidal assault on Gaza with little international notice.
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Story by Mohammed Ahmed, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Jawa Ahmad
GAZA CITY, GAZA—Three-year-old Yahya Al-Malahi lay on a metal table in the morgue of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Family members wept as they caressed his small body and stroked his cheek. A large hole, the size of an orange, was missing from the back of his head.
Yahya was among five Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a police vehicle on Al-Nafaq street, a crowded civilian area in the middle of Gaza City on Tuesday.
“I wish it had been me instead of you,” Yahya’s father Mukhlis Al-Malahi said as he sobbed over his son’s body. His sweater was soaked with his son’s blood. Al-Malahi told Drop Site Yahya was being carried on his uncle’s back when the missile struck. “I felt I was hit, I began to say the shahada. Then I found my son, his head was split open,” he said.
Yahya Al-Malahi’s father, Mukhlis, and other relatives inside the morgue at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on April 14, 2026. Video by Mohammed Ahmed.
The Al-Malahi family were walking on Al-Nafaq street on their way back from a wedding of a relative when the attack happened. “My cousin, his son, and his brothers were on their way home when there was an airstrike in the street,” Yahya’s cousin, Hader Al-Malahi, told Drop Site through tears. “The little boy was martyred, and his brothers and uncles were injured. That’s what happened. His crime was that he was a Palestinian child—a Palestinian child who had a wedding to attend. Instead of wearing a suit, he is now wearing a shroud.”
Overcome with grief, Mukhlis bent over his son’s lifeless body and held it close. “Is this a ceasefire, people? Look,” he said pointing at the gaping wound in Yahya’s head. “Is this a ceasefire?”
On Al-Nafaq street, crowds gathered around the destroyed police vehicle. Small pools of blood stained the road. Abu Ahmad, a bystander, witnessed the attack. “There was a police patrol going out on a mission,” he told Drop Site. “They took a detainee with them and while coming from Al-Yarmouk Junction toward Al-Nafaq Junction, they were targeted.” Two policemen and the detainee were killed in the strike and several others injured.
In response, Hamas blasted Israel for deliberately targeting police forces working for Gaza’s Interior Ministry. “The intensified targeting of civilian police officers by the terrorist occupation army comes within the context of the Zionist government’s relentless efforts to sow chaos in the Gaza Strip, weaken the security apparatus, and provide an opportunity for its proxy militias to implement its malicious agendas,” the group said in a statement.
The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on a police vehcile on Al-Nafaq street in Gaza City on April 14, 2026. Video by Mohammed Ahmed.
Seven more Palestinians were killed in separate Israeli attacks on Gaza on Tuesday alone, including five killed in an airstrike near Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, one killed by Israeli fire in Beit Lahia, and another child—14-year-old Adam Ahmed Halaa—killed in an Israeli attack near the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Since Israel signed a “ceasefire” deal with Hamas in October, it has violated the agreement on a routine basis, killing Palestinians in near daily attacks; preventing sufficient amounts of food, medicine, building materials, and other life essentials from entering the territory; and restricting the number of Palestinians allowed to leave Gaza through the Rafah crossing for medical evacuations or to return from abroad. As part of the agreement, Israeli ground troops withdrew to what is known as the “yellow line” but have continued to encroach further west, sometimes by hundreds of meters in Gaza’s narrow territory, and currently occupy close to 60% of the Strip.
Negotiations around the next phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to entail a further withdrawal of Israeli troops, remain frozen. Over the past month and a half, as the world’s attention has shifted to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and Israel’s invasion and bombardment of Lebanon, Israel has been able to continue its genocidal assault on Gaza with little international notice. Attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the occupied West Bank have also escalated significantly.
Since the agreement went into effect, over 760 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry—the equivalent of four Palestinians being killed every day for six months. Over 2,100 have been wounded. At least 180 children have been killed over this period.
“Six months on, the ceasefire has failed to end the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, with Israeli authorities continuing to impose conditions intended to destroy conditions of life,” Claire San Filippo, the emergency manager for Doctors Without Borders, said in a recent statement. “Despite the reduction of the intensity of violence, Israeli attacks are continuous and the situation remains catastrophic.” The group said since October its teams in Gaza have dressed over 40,000 wounds for patients who suffered violent trauma, including gunshots and blasts.
Killed in a school tent
Among the Israeli attacks that rippled through northern Gaza last week was the killing of Ritaj Rihan, a 9-year-old girl who was shot dead while attending class in a school tent in Beit Lahia. The Abu Ubaida Ibn Al-Jarrah School, a series of tents held up by wooden frames and lined with simple benches and desks, is located two kilometers from the yellow line, according to multiple witnesses, where Israeli troops are stationed.
“The girl was in a classroom, among her classmates. We were suddenly shocked by gunfire from the Zionist enemy. She was wounded with a bullet through her mouth, and she was martyred instantly,” Ayman Rihan, 45, a teacher at the school, told Drop Site as he stood beside Ritaj’s body in the morgue of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Thursday. Her body was covered with a piece of blue cloth and her bloodied jacket and sweater placed on her torso. Her long auburn hair draped out from under the cloth over the edge of the table and her bare arms stretched out to the side. The bullet that struck her had been placed on the table beside her head. Ayman, who is the cousin of Ritaj’s father’s, carried Ritaj to Al-Shifa and called her parents to tell them she was dead.
Ritaj Rihan’s body in the morgue, her mother in Beit Lahia, and the tent at the Abu Ubaida Ibn Al-Jarrah School where Ritaj was killed. April 9, 2026. Video by Mohammed Ahmed.
“This girl was holding her notebook and had her backpack, she was writing and was inside the classroom, inside the school, inside a safe space—a space where all the students feel safe. Today, even when we are in a school or in an educational tent, we have no safety,” Ayman said. “Every day children like this one are killed—innocent children. What was her crime? Was she carrying a Kalashnikov? Was she carrying a rocket? Was she carrying ammunition? She was carrying her schoolbag on her shoulders.”
Inside a tent in Beit Lahia, Ritaj’s mother, Ola Rihan, sat with other women in a circle of grief and mourning. The ever present buzz of Israeli drones overhead filled the air. Her mother held Ritaj’s notebook, its pages splattered with her daughter’s blood.
“She went to school like every other time she goes,” Ola told Drop Site. “She hadn’t even been there an hour when I got the news that she was injured. I said, ‘Maybe it’s a minor injury in her leg or her hand.’ Not even fifteen minutes later they told me ‘Your daughter has been martyred,’” she said, taking deep breaths as she spoke, nearly unable to speak. “I collapsed to the ground from the shock—I couldn’t bear it.”
“There was supposed to be a ceasefire but it didn’t happen. She was in the school when the bullet found her…What do you want me to say? Ritaj is everything to me. Ritaj is a piece of my heart,” she said, breaking down in tears. “She went on her own two feet and she came back to me on a stretcher.” She held up pictures of Ritaj on her phone, one showed her holding a soccer ball and giving a thumbs up sign.
On Wednesday, a group of 350 former European ministers, ambassadors, and senior officials urged the European Union to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement over Israel’s systematic violations of international law in Palestine. “With the world attention focussed elsewhere, Israel under the cloak of illegal military operations in Iran and Lebanon, has pursued the subjugation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by doubling down on its illegal occupation policy,” the signatories said in a joint statement on Wednesday.
“We are in danger. There is nowhere safe to go,” affirmed Ritaj’s mother. “There is no shelter. They destroyed our houses and left us with nothing. They took our loved ones. They took what is most precious to us…There is no hope. Gaza is exhausted.”
Ritaj’s father, Abdul Raouf Rihan, 29, had walked her to school that morning. “As usual, I dropped her off at school. But yesterday, I was shocked—after just one hour, my daughter came back to me as a lifeless body,” he told Drop Site. “The school is about two kilometers away from the yellow line. My daughter went out to learn, not to fight. A bullet of spite from the Israeli occupation struck her.”
“As for the ceasefire, it is a big lie,” he said. “The war has not ended. As long as blood is spilled every day, the war has not ended.”
Sami Vanderlip edited the video for this report.
How much Palestinian children's blood will the US, Republicans and Democrats allow Israel to stain their hands. Does AIPAC money really wash away moral responsibility? Lets get of this moral
gutter that Israel is dragging America through.(acceptance of GENOCIDE)
The news from Gaza continues to be horrific since the cold-blooded murder of innocent children by Israel continues unabated. I attribute this to the complete moral collapse of the US government and the governments of the European Union. Somehow, someway, this carnage has to be STOPPED! Thank you for your continued coverage of this vitally important issue!