The heartbreaking story of 10-year-old Gazan girl with pink rollerblades, who was killed in Israeli strikes

Tala Abu Ajwa, a 10-year-old girl from Gaza, laced up her pink rollerblades and headed outside to play with friends, hoping to briefly escape the grim reality of war surrounding her.

But that moment of respite was tragically cut short when an Israeli strike tore through her neighbourhood, taking her life.

The heartbreaking image of Tala, her body wrapped in a white shroud with her pink roller skates still on is being widely circulated across social media, becoming another defining image of the war in Gaza — a place UNICEF has called “a graveyard for children."

Here’s a closer look at her story

‘She loved to play. She loved life’

On Tuesday evening, Tala “insisted and begged” her mother, Hadeel, to let her go rollerblading with her friends.

More from Explainers

How ChatGPT is becoming everyone’s BFF and why that’s dangerous This Week in Explainers: How recovering from Gen-Z protests is a Himalayan task for Nepal

“My neighbour told me, ‘My children are downstairs, let her go play with them.’ I said okay, go down for a bit, then come back,” Hadeel told ITV News.

Her father, Hussam Abu Ajwa, was also hesitant at first as blasts and gunfire had become more frequent around their home in Gaza but eventually, like any other parent gave in to her pleas.

“She begged me and said, ‘Please, Daddy, let me go out.’ I felt sad because she wanted to play with the girls,” Hussam told AFP.

But moments later he heard two “mighty explosions,” sending him running outside where he found his 10-year-old daughter buried beneath a pile of rubble.

A piece of shrapnel from an Israeli strike had torn through an apartment in the building, slicing through the air and striking Tala in the neck.

Impact Shorts

More Shorts

Ghaziabad woman dead, pilgrims attacked in bus… How Nepal’s Gen-Z protests turned into a living hell for Indian tourists

Were bodyguards involved in Charlie Kirk’s shooting? The many conspiracies surrounding the killing

One of the friends she was playing with was injured, and another - just three years old - was also killed.

Witnessing a scene of devastation, Hussam recognised his daughter by her roller skates, as it was “the only thing that was visible,” he told NPR.

Abu Ajwa told NBC News, that he rushed his daughter to the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. The medics didn’t even have time to remove the pink rollerblades on Tala’s feet, and despite efforts to save her life, she died.  

Her father told NPR, “Those roller skates she was wearing, she’d really wanted me to buy them. I got them for her, and it was the reason, praise be to God, for her death when she went down [the stairs to play]."

“She loved to play. She loved life,” he further said.

Tala’s death is yet another addition to the heartbreaking toll of children lost to Israeli fire, leaving countless parents grieving for their sons and daughters.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that over 40,000 people have been killed in the ongoing conflict, with a third of the victims being children.

The Israeli Defence Forces told NBC News, that it was unaware of a specific strike that took place in the coordinates but had struck a target in its vicinity. It did not address questions about the type of weapon used or whether it had opened an investigation into Tala’s killing.

‘Her ambition was to go back to school’

The 10-year-old had survived 332 days of war, enduring relentless bombardments, hunger, and uncertainty.

Her father, Abu Ajwa, a high school chemistry teacher, had been forced to flee with his family eight times since the Israeli attack on October 7. The family of five often escaped on foot, sometimes in the middle of the night, searching for safety.

“She used to say to me, ‘Why don’t we live like all the other children in the world? I wish we could live a peaceful life. We don’t want wars, Mum. I’ve had enough of wars’,” her mother, Hadeel, painfully recalled.

The day before she died, Abu Ajwa said that his daughter told him she dreamed of becoming a dentist and going back to school, NPR reported.

“Her ambition was to go back to school and for her backpack to be filled with books again, instead of clothes for every time we’re displaced,” her mother said. “I bought her a new backpack, but she just put clothes in it again.”

The UN says the war has devastated most of Gaza’s schools, with most either destroyed or damaged. Children haven’t been in school in nearly a year, with classrooms turned into crowded shelters for displaced families with nowhere else to go.

“The longer children stay out of school, the higher the risk of a lost generation, fuelling resentment & extremism,”  United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, chief Philippe Lazzarini Lazzarini said.

“With no ceasefire, children are likely to fall prey to exploitation including child labour and recruitment into armed groups.”

Speaking to NBC News, the grieving father expressed a heartbreaking hope that his daughter’s death would spark global action to end “this hideous war.”

“I swear, if the war ended and the bloodshed stopped, I would still be sad about my daughter,” Abu Ajwa said, at one point holding up her blood-stained rollerblades. “But I would also be happy that Tala was the reason for putting an end to the massacres.”

With input from agencies