Israeli Attack on Palestinian Family on Gaza Beach

SHRIEKING for her lifeless father and running from corpse to corpse, she has become the new icon for Palestinians, the girl on the beach who sees dead people.

In the days since a wild-haired Huda Ghalia was filmed howling with anguish amid a family picnic blown apart by shellfire, she has become an instant symbol of suffering across the Arab world.

On satellite channels and Palestinian television, the images of the 11-year-old Gaza schoolgirl crying “My father, oh my father” are played again and again, the soundtrack laid over news footage from Gaza and the West Bank.

Lying dead or dying are her father, Ali, 45, and sisters Aliya, 25, Sabreen, 4, Hanadi, 14 months, and Ehan, 18. Also killed were her father’s second wife, Raisa, 35, and Huda’s half-brother Haitham, aged 5 months. Huda, standing in shock as their broken bodies are carried away, suddenly breaks down and screams “Oh world”, before throwing herself next to her father’s open-eyed body and shouting at the cameraman who has arrived: “Film him, film him.”