Ten-year-old Amina was fetching water when a missile strike killed her

When Amina Al-Mufti left the home her family was sheltering in, her parents expected she would quickly return with a bucket full of water.

But she never came back.

"I heard the sound of the missile, we were not sure if our daughter was hit or not," Amina's father, Ashraf, told the ABC.

"My wife went through the Kamal Adwan Hospital to look for her, we found her wrapped in shrouds — she asked me has she been martyred? I said yes, praise the lord."

The Al-Mufti family had fled their home in Jabalia, northern Gaza, after it was shelled by Israeli forces, seeking refuge with family members.

Ashraf was injured while living in his sister's home, and they moved again to a building metres away from the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya.

Ashraf's 10-year-old daughter had ventured outside, where she could collect clean water from the hospital.

It was there that she was killed, on December 21, 2024.

"Amina would take care of the house we lived in — she would get the water, she would help us, do shopping, she did everything we needed with her mother," he said

"She filled the home [with] light, as children do, and after she passed away our home was filled with darkness, there was no life left."

Shocking video of Amina's killing was first broadcast by Al Jazeera last month, showing the small girl lugging a water container and then disappearing into a cloud of dust as an Israeli strike hit her.

Soon after two men are seen retrieving her lifeless body, which was lying crumpled in the gutter.

Ashraf knew the moment he saw the video that it was his daughter's final moments.

"I recognised her. I can differentiate her from a million girls, did I not raise her?"

Despite his own injuries, Amina's father dug a grave and temporarily buried her near where she was killed.

Her body was later exhumed and moved to a grave in the Beit Lahiya cemetery in late January.

Israel denies knowledge of strike

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has described the video as evidence of a "deliberate killing" of an "unarmed child who posed no threat" to Israeli forces operating in the area.

Kamal Adwan Hospital was the focus of an intense siege by the Israeli military in December, with the building and surrounding area hit multiple times.

Days after the strike which killed Amina, the Israeli military stormed the hospital and forcibly evacuated patients and people sheltering there.

Doctors and staff were arrested in the process — including the hospital's director, Hussam Abu Safiya, who remains in Israeli detention.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would not respond to the ABC's questions about the video, saying references to the strike on Amina happening in the immediate vicinity of the Kamal Adwan Hospital on December 21, 2024, were not specific enough to provide an accurate comment.

The IDF ignored a question as to how many strikes hit the area around Kamal Adwan Hospital on the same day.

Waiting for refuge

The pain of losing his daughter was still raw for Ashraf, as he spoke to the ABC and watched the video of her final moments.

Basic tasks such as collecting water are traumatic.

"When I fill those two buckets I think of my daughter — the two buckets, they are the only ones I have," he said.

Since Amina's death, Ashraf has also lost his wife and one of his sons, aged just seven at the time. The pair were killed in Israeli strikes in May.

His father and brother have also died.

Ashraf is now living in a tent in Gaza City, and facing the prospect of being displaced again as Israel ramps up its military offensive to take control of the area, which is described as one of the last remaining strongholds of Hamas.

"I am one of the people that does not have any life left here, I request to leave the country, and take my children, because I expect any day that someone of them will die, like my kids died," he said.

"It is enough — three of them died, it is enough. And me and my son were almost the fourth and the fifth to die."