The last time Mona Awda Talla saw her daughter Shahed alive, she was leaving the house to go buy her some cake, wearing pink pants. The 10-year-old stopped to play foosball with her friends beside the cake shop in
Gaza’s Al-Maghazi refugee camp. Moments later, she was dead.
Grief-stricken and sobbing, Awda Talla said she still can’t believe that her only daughter will never come home. A video showing the aftermath of the strike that killed Shahed captured her sprawled on the ground next to her friends, her pink pants impossible to miss.
“There is no Shahed now. Every time she came in, she said, ‘Mom.’ I would say, ‘My soul, my soul,’” Awda Talla told CNN. “My soul is gone.”
In the two weeks since the attack, the Israeli military’s statements have shifted, but it has not taken responsibility for the strike that ultimately killed Shahed and 10 other children.
An analysis of the site of the attack, documented by a freelance journalist working for CNN in Gaza, paints a very different picture of Israeli military responsibility. Three munitions experts who reviewed videos and photos showing damage caused by the strike and shrapnel left in its aftermath, independently drew the same conclusion: that the carnage was likely caused by a precision-guided munition deployed by the Israeli military.