Humans of Gaza: Julia, 3-year-old girl whose parents were killed in Israeli bombing

A third-year-old girl, oblivious of the cataclysmic events unfolding around her, lies on a floor at a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, with injury marks on her forehead and feet clearly visible.

In her little hands, she is holding a bottle of orange juice and candy, staring curiously at something in front of her or perhaps lost in innocent thoughts.

Julia is the only surviving member of her family after her parents and grandparents were killed in an Israeli regime airstrike earlier this week in northern Gaza.

The little girl was lucky to survive with minor injuries, but she still does not what what befell her.

A photo being circulated on social media shows the little girl in the lap of her father and mother during happier days. Julia does not know where her parents are, but she knows they got bombed.

“My mum got bombed. The Israelis bombed me…” the three-year-old girl is heard screaming in one of the videos shared online, with tears in her eyes.

A local Palestinian journalist and her slain father’s friend, Ismail Jood, is presently taking care of Julia.

Jood hasn’t told her that she won’t be seeing her parents again. She doesn’t know what bombs can do.

In one of the videos Jood posted on social media, Julia is seen in his lap as they walk through a dim-lit lane in Gaza, with the tender soul cluelessly looking around, visibly frightened.

A social media user, denouncing the murder of her parents, said the three-year-old Palestinian child from Gaza is an orphan now because the Israeli regime killed both her parents in “self-defense.”

Many children like Julia have no place to call their home in Gaza now. The Israeli genocidal attacks have claimed the lives of more than 11,000 Palestinians since October 7, most of them children.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon, in a tweet last week said at least 30 children admitted at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital had no survivors.

The biggest hospital in the besieged territory was closed on Monday due to the shortage of fuel.

Israeli airstrikes have primarily targeted civilian areas in Gaza, including hospitals, schools and mosques. And despite the global outcry, the killing machine hasn’t stopped.