REEMA Asaad Awad, a 33-year-old mother, burned to death when an Israeli air strike set her family’s flat in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood ablaze at around 4am on Wednesday, while her young daughter was trapped inside.
Footage from inside shows the girl sitting alone on a bed as smoke fills the room and fire burns the wall above her.
In another shot she presses her hand to her mouth, eyes wide with terror. She was rescued.
The strike wrecked the flat and neighbouring buildings and wounded two other people.
Israel claims it targeted a member of Hamas but has produced no evidence.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest US Muslim civil rights group in the US, urged Congress to condemn the killing.
‘The horrific video of a little girl surrounded by fire as her mother burns to death in their home exemplifies the reality of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,’ it said.
‘We cannot comprehend how any political leader with a conscience could continue to fund the sheer cruelty of the Israeli government and the war criminals who carry out its orders.
‘Members of Congress must condemn this atrocity and demand an immediate end to all US support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.’
Israeli forces killed three more Palestinians on Wednesday. Two died in a strike on a vehicle in al-Qarara, north of Khan Younis, and Saddam Ikrami al-Za’anin, 23, was shot dead in Jabalia refugee camp. Mohammed Fawzi al-Jumla, 32, died of wounds from an earlier strike.
Yesterday, a drone strike killed another Palestinian in northern Gaza City.
Gaza’s health ministry says Israel has killed 1,501 Palestinians and wounded 5,323 since the October 2025 ceasefire, and more than 74,000 since the genocide began in October 2023.
The deal provides for 600 aid trucks a day, but Israel still imposes severe restrictions on supplies, and reconstruction has not begun.
In the occupied West Bank, settlers have set fire to a mosque, an olive tree and a vehicle, and Israeli forces arrested at least nine Palestinians in raids overnight into yesterday
Sally Rooney books withdrawn due to her support for Palestine Action
IRISH novelist Sally Rooney said on Wednesday that her books are being withdrawn from sale in the UK because of her support for Palestine Action, the direct-action group the British government has proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Her publisher, Faber, confirmed that the ban ‘has led to circumstances where Faber cannot pass on UK earnings to Sally Rooney for her work’.
‘To sell a writer’s work and not be able to pass on earnings is an unconscionable situation for a publisher.
‘As such, and in full agreement with Sally, we have taken the decision that we can no longer supply her works in the UK in any format,’ Faber said in a statement.
Rooney said the decision to withdraw her books had been made ‘with my full agreement’.
‘I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions, and I am wholly prepared to accept the consequences,’ she said.
Rooney, 35, is the author of four critically praised novels, ‘Conversations with Friends’, ‘Normal People’, ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You’ and ‘Intermezzo’, which have sold millions of copies. The BBC adapted the first two for television.
A strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, she wrote in The Irish Times in August 2025: ‘I too support Palestine Action.
‘If this makes me a “supporter of terror” under UK law, so be it.’ She said she would use proceeds from her novels and television fees to keep supporting the group.
The Labour government banned Palestine Action after its activists broke into a Royal Air Force base in June 2025 in protest at British military support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Membership of, or support for, the group is now a criminal offence carrying up to 14 years in prison. More than 3,000 people have been arrested since the ban, including people holding placards reading ‘I support Palestine Action’. More than 1,200 have been charged under the Terrorism Act. None has been convicted.
Civil liberties groups say the ban and the arrests that followed unjustifiably restrict the rights to protest and free speech.
Lawyers for Palestine Action will ask the Supreme Court next month to overturn the ban.
All cases against people charged with breaching it have been put on hold until the court rules.
