They thought it was safe to walk home. Instead, she was the last child killed before Gaza’s truce.

JERUSALEM — As Ahmed al-Qudra set off to see what — if anything — remained of his family’s home in the village of al-Qarara, he believed the long-awaited ceasefire in Gaza had begun.

So at around 9 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 19, he began walking north through the city of Khan Younis with his seven children, including his oldest son, Adli, 16, and his youngest daughter, Sama, 6.  

It would prove to be a fatal mistake. Unbeknownst to him and his family, the ceasefire — due to start that morning at 8.30 a.m. — had been delayed. Hamas had not provided the names of the first hostages it planned to free that afternoon, so Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered airstrikes to continue.  

As the al-Qudras approached El Bareer Street, one of Khan Younis’ main roads, an Israeli aircraft attacked a passing Palestinian police vehicle. The Israeli military said in a statement at the time that it was hitting “terror targets.”

But the blast also sent shrapnel tearing into the al-Qudra family.

Video verified by NBC News shows Ahmed’s body lying in the street alongside Adli’s, as several of the smaller children scream for their father, shortly after the strike at around 9.30 a.m.

By the time the truce finally began at 11:15 a.m., Sama had been declared dead.

She was the last child killed in Gaza before the ceasefire, a spokesperson at Nasser Hospital told NBC News.

“This is their fate,” Sama’s mother, Hanan, 31, told NBC News last week, of the death of her husband, son and daughter. 

After Sama’s small body was brought to Nasser Hospital, she was laid out briefly on a metal tray — barefoot and wearing a pink sweater — before being wrapped in a traditional Islamic burial shroud. Adli lay next to her. 

That morning the children “were jumping with joy” at the prospect of returning home, Hanan said, adding that she was in the market shopping for food when she heard the explosion and rushed to the hospital, praying her family wasn’t involved. 

Instead she would find her husband, son and daughter were among the last of more than 47,000 people killed in Gaza since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023, according to health officials in the enclave.    

Before the war, Hanan said the family of nine had struggled financially but found happiness in their home in al-Qarara. Sama would sometimes daydream aloud about her wedding day, asking what dress she would wear, Hanan said.  

But the family was left displaced and destitute after the fighting started, she said, adding that the children often went hungry. 

“Their father and I would cry at night when we put our heads on the pillow because they wanted to eat,” she said. 

The war took an especially hard toll on Sama, Hanan said. She shared a video with NBC News showing three of her daughters walking down a dusty road carrying yellow plastic jerry cans to collect water. Sama struggles to keep up with the older girls, wiping sweat and dust from her eyes as she approaches the camera.  

“She had been asking for more than two months to eat a banana,” Hanan said. “I took her and bought her a small banana. She wanted pizza, so I bought her a small piece for 2 shekels (55 cents). I told her to eat it in the street so that her siblings wouldn’t know.”

“I was afraid they might die wanting something they couldn’t have,” she added. 

The Israeli strike that killed Sama occurred on President Joe Biden’s last full day in office, and such attacks were a source of ongoing tension between his administration and Netanyahu’s government. 

The police in Gaza fall under the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry, and enforce laws set by the militant group after it took control of the Strip in 2007. Israel considers members of the police force to be Hamas terrorists and legitimate military targets, even though some officers also carry out more mundane duties like traffic enforcement and crime prevention. 

So the Israel Defense Forces repeatedly targeted police officers early in its 15-month military campaign, which it launched after Hamas killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostage in the Oct. 7, terrorist attack, according to Israeli tallies.     

The Biden administration warned that Israel’s targeting of Palestinian police officers was adding to the chaos in Gaza and leaving humanitarian aid convoys vulnerable to looting.

“With the departure of police escorts it has been virtually impossible for the U.N. or anyone else … to safely move assistance in Gaza because of criminal gangs,” David Satterfield, Biden’s envoy for humanitarian aid, said earlier this month. 

On the morning of Jan. 19, uniformed police officers returned to the streets of Khan Younis and, like the al-Qudra family, they also appear to have mistakenly believed that the ceasefire had gone into effect.  

Hours after her family members were killed, an exhausted Hanan leaned her against the wall of a relative’s home. Several of her surviving children sat next to her, a blanket spread across their laps. 

She scrolled through photos of her children, pausing on a picture of a Sama taken during the pandemic. She was holding a medical mask over her nose, even though it was far too big for her small face. 

“She was like a rose,” Hanan said quietly. “May God have mercy upon her.”