Little Amna Went to Get Water. An Israeli Drone Killed Her
Zeteo's newest contributor and Pulitzer Prize winner, Mosab Abu Toha, speaks to Amna al-Mufti's father about the murder of his 11-year-old daughter in Gaza - caught on video for all the world to see.
Editor's Note:
Today, we are pleased and privileged to announce a new Zeteo contributor. Mosab Abu Toha is an acclaimed Palestinian writer and poet from Gaza, and author of the new collection of poems, Forest of Noise. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary this year for his portrayal of Gaza in the New Yorker – and then faced censorship and shadow-banning from the Big Tech companies! Now he is writing for us, as we continue to platform and amplify Palestinian voices in the midst of this ongoing genocide. Do please become a paid subscriber to Zeteo to read his future articles in full, and to support our continuing growth and expansion. A free press isn't free.
- Mehdi
“I know you prefer desalinated water to tap water, and I will get you more.”
These were the final words of 11-year-old Amna to her father Ashraf al-Mufti, before an Israeli drone missile killed her.
Ashraf was lying on his bed, recovering from severe injuries that he sustained when a missile hit a house adjacent to his sister’s, with whom he was staying after his own house was destroyed months before.
Once Ashraf was discharged from the hospital, friends who lived meters away from the Kamal Odwan Hospital offered to let him and his family stay with them.
On Dec. 21, 2024, at around 1:30 pm, Amna stepped out for the final time. She walked the short distance to the hospital, still powered by a generator and functioning desalination unit, to refill her water container. Just as she left, a missile struck, obliterating both her and the container she had strained to carry.
“She loved to fill her container with water. She loved to help the family, especially after I was wounded,” Ashraf told me, his voice heavy with sorrow.
It wasn’t until Aug. 17, 2025, that the world saw the video of Amna’s final moments: a ponytailed girl, clutching a white container, dashing across a narrow street, only to be struck down as white smoke billowed, and time stood still.
Warning: The video shows distressing scenes.
The footage sent shockwaves across the globe.
“I heard the airstrike but never thought it was targeting my daughter,” Ashraf said. Two hours later, the family rushed to the hospital only to find the slain body of Amna on the floor, abandoned by her water container.
Amna was laid to rest in Beit Lahia Cemetery, a place where many of my own family rest. Her mother, Najla, had wanted a concrete grave, etched with Amna’s name, but the cruel blockade made even that simple dignity unaffordable.
For Ashraf, his own injuries and the killing of his daughter did not signal the end of his tragedies.
On May 17, 2025, his wife, Najla, and their 8-year-old son, Baraa, were killed in an airstrike on a house where they were sheltering in the Tal al-Zaatar neighborhood in Jabalia Camp.
Najla and Baraa were buried in Shekh Redwan Cemetery in Gaza City, far from Amna’s burial place.
Ashraf told me that in the airstrike that killed his wife and son, another son, 14-year-old Mohammad, was wounded for the fourth time. In the previous three times, Mohammad was wounded when Israeli quadcopters opened fire and dropped grenades on him and others while filling up buckets of water in the streets of different areas.
Notably, just six days after Amna’s death near Kamal Adwan Hospital, Israeli forces raided the facility. They abducted Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital’s pediatrician-director, alongside other staff, and set the surgical suite, lab, and storerooms ablaze, rendering the hospital non-functional.
Amna’s tragic video bears witness to a harrowing truth: children are targeted, and the world remains complicit and a partner in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The world has failed. People in Gaza feel betrayed. I felt this in Ashraf’s voice. I feel this in the voices of my relatives and friends in Gaza with whom I talk every single day.
No one shall come one day and say, “We did not know.”
The whole world not only knew but has been watching this live-streamed.
Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and writer from Gaza. He won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and the 2024 OPC’s Flora Lewis Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2023.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
Check out an original poem Mosab wrote for Zeteo last year, and read more from Zeteo’s coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza:
I saw this video. Murder of a child trying to get water. In plain sight. I will never forget. This beautiful child deserved to live, and access to water and food is a human right. I will never stop protesting this with all my being.
UNDISPUTABLE PROOF THAT THEY ARE TARGETING ALL CHILDREN, WOMEN AND MEN AND EXPOSES THEIR LIES THAT THEY ARE TARGETING MEMBERS OF HAMAS