Warning: This article contains disturbing images.
Tala Hussam Abu Ajiwa wanted to go outside and play on her pink roller skates.
At first, Tala’s father, Hussam Abu Ajiwa, told his 10-year-old daughter she couldn’t do it. But she “insisted and begged,” and like many parents, he and his wife gave in, despite their fears about the frequent explosions and gunfire around their home in Gaza City.
“She went down to play. To enjoy playing like the rest of the children in the world do,” Abu Ajiwa told an NBC News crew on the ground on Thursday.
But moments later he heard two “huge explosions,” prompting him to run outside and find his daughter under a pile of rubble, her feet clad in the roller skates she had hoped would give her a brief moment of escape from the war that had come to dominate her young life.
It was the image of the roller skates, with their white Velcro closures and row of powder-pink wheels protruding from beneath the white fabric covering Tala’s body, that circulated widely on social media this week.
Tala’s family described the explosion that killed her as an Israeli missile strike. In response to an NBC News request, the IDF said it was not aware of a specific strike that occurred at the coordinates NBC provided, but that it struck a nearby target. NBC News has not independently verified the circumstances of the explosions.
Abu Ajiwa said he rushed his daughter to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, where she died despite desperate efforts to save her life.
In video obtained by NBC News, the little girl is seen wrapped in a white shroud, her roller skates on the ground, as her loved ones lean in to hold her, kiss her face and say their final goodbyes.
According to the United Nations, his family, along with about 90 percent of the population, had been displaced in Gaza for months.
At one point, they were able to return to their home in Gaza City, where Abu Ajiwa showed the NBC News crew his daughter’s room, which was brightly decorated in pink and white and filled with toys.
In other photos shared by her family, Tala is seen posing in her school uniform and swimming while holding up peace signs. In one photo, she kisses her father on the cheek.
Health officials say she is now one of more than 40,800 people killed in Gaza since Israel launched months of attacks following Hamas terror attacks on October 7.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported In May it was reported that more than 14,000 children were among the dead, but it was later clarified that this only included those who had been identified – and that number has only continued to rise in the months since.
The grieving father said he could only hope his daughter’s killing would move the world to end “this horrible war.”
“I swear, if the war ended and the bloodshed stopped, I would still be sad for my daughter,” Abu Ajiwa said, at one point holding up the roller skates – now stained red. “But I would also be happy that Tala was the reason to end the massacres.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
