Sela Mahmoud
Sela Mahmoud was killed in an Israeli airstrike that struck the al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza while she was sheltering there with her siblings.
On Monday night, Sela's mother, Alaa Shehada, and her 13-year-old sister left their camp in al-Shati to walk to the Zikim aid point in hopes of finding food. Sela remained behind at the camp with her 14-year-old sister and 6-year-old brother. Around 01:45 AM, explosions rang out—what her mother initially thought was distant shelling. But a mother’s instinct told her otherwise. With the help of strangers, Alaa managed to reach her daughter by phone, only to hear the devastating confirmation: the camp had been hit, and Sela was dead. Her two siblings were seriously injured and taken to al-Shifa Hospital. The Israeli military later responded that it could not comment without coordinates and reiterated that it aims to avoid civilian harm.
Biography
Sela Mahmoud was an 8-year-old Palestinian girl living in a camp for displaced people in al-Shati, northern Gaza. She was a cheerful, loving child with dark hair and brown eyes who adored spending time by the sea. Amid a worsening humanitarian crisis, Sela had been suffering from extreme hunger and was staying in the camp with her mother and three siblings. Despite her young age, she was aware of her family’s struggle for food and expressed a simple, heartbreaking wish in her final days—to eat a full bowl of lentils. She was killed during an Israeli strike on the camp while her mother had gone out to search for food.
Sela Mahmoud was a bright and affectionate 8-year-old who lived through some of the most difficult days in Gaza’s recent history. Displaced by conflict, she and her family sought shelter in a camp in al-Shati, northern Gaza. Despite the hardships surrounding her, Sela remained close to her siblings and deeply connected to her mother, Alaa Shehada. She loved being by the sea, a source of calm in a chaotic world. Hunger became a daily reality in her final months. On the night of her death, her mother left to search for aid, trusting that the camp would be safe enough for Sela and her siblings to stay behind. But Sela’s young life was cut short in the early hours of the morning when an Israeli strike hit the area. Her last words to her mother were haunting in their simplicity:
“I want to eat a whole bowl of lentils until I'm full.”
Pleas of Surviving Relatives and Family if any
Sela's mother, Alaa Shehada, offered a heart-wrenching account of her daughter's final moments and the deep sorrow of losing her. Though she did not make an explicit public or political plea, her words conveyed profound grief and a desperate cry for safety, food, and protection for children like Sela.
“I felt the strike in my heart. My intuition as a mother told me this strike reached my kids.”
She described the agony of leaving Sela and her other children behind for just a short while to search for food, only to return to devastating news. When she managed to contact her older daughter by phone, she learned that Sela had been killed and her other two children were seriously injured.
Alaa also recalled Sela’s final words, which serve as a heartbreaking reminder of the deprivation facing families in Gaza:
“I want to eat a whole bowl of lentils until I'm full.”
These memories—Sela’s hunger, her innocence, and her tragic death—form an implicit plea for humanity, for the protection of children, and for urgent humanitarian aid. Through Alaa’s story, the world is shown the unbearable cost of war on families, and especially on the most vulnerable.
Additional Information
Sources & References
Sela Mahmoud, eight, was killed in the early hours of Tuesday morning, her mother Alaa Shehada says. The little girl had been staying at a camp for displaced people in al-Shati in northern Gaza with her mother and two older sisters, aged 14 and 13, and younger brother, six. On Monday evening, Alaa says she and her 13-year-old daughter set out to the Zikim aid point, a couple of kilometres away, to get food, leaving the other three children behind. But at about 01:45 she heard the sound what she thought was shelling in the distance and immediately feared the worst. "I felt the strike in my heart. My intuition as a mother told me this strike reached my kids." With the help of strangers, Alaa managed to phone her older daughter back at the camp who confirmed that they'd been struck and Sela killed. "My heart was broken," says Alaa. The other two children survived but were seriously injured and are in Gaza's al-Shifa Hospital, she says.1 bbc.com Open source