‘She went through two surgeries. They told us to wait so that’s what we are doing. We wait and we pray all the time,’ the girl’s father told The Jewish Chronicle
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New details are emerging about the little Bedouin girl who was the only major Israeli victim of Iran’s rocket barrage on the weekend.
The seven-year-old girl, identified as Amina al-Hassouni in local media reports, was critically injured when shrapnel from an intercepted ballistic missile fell on her family’s home in a Bedouin town near Arad, in Israel’s southern Negev region.
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“It fell on us into the house at around 2 in the morning. She was sleeping in the house and we immediately took her to Soroka hospital,” the girl’s father, Mohammed al-Hassouni, told The Jewish Chronicle, which has obtained exclusive photos of the girl.
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The photos, before she was injured, show a smiling little girl with bangs and bright eyes.
She is reportedly in critical condition and underwent surgery for a head wound. She remains in the pediatric intensive care unit at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, the lone medical centre in southern Israel, reports Times of Israel.
“She went through two surgeries. They told us to wait so that’s what we are doing. We wait and we pray all the time,” the girl’s father said.
The family home is located in the Bedouin village of Al-Fura, which does not have official recognition by the national government, and was not equipped with a shelter. Al-Hassouni told The Jewish Chronicle that one of his sons was also injured and treated by doctors but has since returned home.
“He is with us now, but he still suffers,” the father said. He added that Amina, whom he described as a girl who loves to sing and dance and spend time with her siblings, remains in “serious condition.”
One of Amina’s brothers told Haaretz that there are no protected shelters in the area, and the family rushed outside after waking to the sound of explosions.
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The Magen David Adom emergency response services reported that it met a car carrying Amina on the way to the hospital and began immediate treatment after she was transferred to an ambulance.
Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said the vast majority — 99 per cent — of hundreds of drones and missiles that were fired at Israel were intercepted. The strike was in retaliation for an airstrike two weeks earlier on a building next to Iran’s embassy in Damascus that killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including the top Iranian commander in Syria.
While Israel has not commented on the embassy strike, four unnamed Israeli officials reportedly confirmed to The New York Times that the country was responsible.
“Out of hundreds of launches, only a few rockets penetrated the territory of the State of Israel and caused only minor damage to the infrastructure at the Nabatim base, near the transportation route and the axis in the Hermon area,” Hagari posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, noted Amina’s condition during an emergency UN Security Council session on Sunday, stating the attack “seriously injured Amina al-Hassouni, a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in Israel.”
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Al-Hassouni told The Jewish Chronicle that the family is currently living “on the street” as his children are too scared to return home.
“Nobody is helping me. The only person who spoke to us was the mayor of Arad, who said he would help us protect ourselves,” he said.
He added that his daughter “is not connected to this chaos.”
“She doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t understand politics and she should be left out of it,” he said.
“What I truly want is for every child to be able to live their lives. They are just children.”
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