Editor’s Note: This article contains a distressing image. The girl’s mother gave permission to use it to show the world what her daughter was going through. Hanan Aqel and her sister had one shekel each in their hands, a gift from their grandfather to go and buy sweets. It was a glimmer of familial normality in Gaza for a nine-year-old and her younger sibling that ended in tragedy. “I didn’t hear its whizzing or anything, I only saw a red light when the missile fell,” Hanan recalls from her hospital bed in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza. Her voice is hoarse and cracked, following reconstructive surgery to her face. She has 20% burns to her face, hands, chest, and leg. Her sister, five-year-old Leene, who was walking ahead of her, escaped injury. “There was a man next to me dismembered and bleeding and a block of building cement fell…
