Khan Younis, Gaza — Two Israeli helicopters opened fire on a tent encampment for displaced families in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis on Monday, killing six-year-old Menna Allah Abu Labda and 31-year-old Hanan Mahmoud. Seventeen others were wounded, including children — among them a two-month-old baby who arrived at Nasser Hospital with a severed leg.

Nabil Abu Labda carried his daughter's small body through the hospital corridors, wrapped in a white shroud, her face still. Mourners prayed around her. Her grandmother, Soheir Abu Labda, said she was "a little bird from the birds of paradise" who had been playing at the door of her home when the strike hit.

This is what a "ceasefire" looks like in Gaza.

A Palestinian man carries the small shrouded body of a young girl through a hospital corridor during a funeral in Khan Younis

A Ceasefire in Name Only

The October ceasefire, brokered by the Trump administration, was supposed to halt the killing. Instead, it has provided diplomatic cover for Israel to continue striking civilian areas while the world looks away. Some 900 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since the truce supposedly came into effect, according to Gaza health officials — a number that does not distinguish between combatants and civilians because the dead are the dead, and they are overwhelmingly not fighters.

"There is no ceasefire, nothing at all. It's all just deceiving people, nothing more and nothing less," said Khader Abu Libda, a relative of Menna Allah, during her funeral procession.

The Israeli military told Reuters it had struck militants in the area and provided no further information. This is the same statement they issue every time a child is killed — a claim no journalist can independently verify because Israel has barred international press from Gaza for over a year and a half. The dead are buried before the world asks questions.

The Target: A Tent City for the Displaced

The Mawasi area where Menna Allah was killed is not a military zone. It is a stretch of coastline designated by Israel itself as a "safe zone" — one of the crowded parcels of sand where Palestinians from across Gaza were ordered to flee when their homes were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of displaced families live in tents there, with no permanent structures, no bomb shelters, nowhere to hide when the helicopters come.

Striking a tent encampment for displaced families is not a military operation. It is an attack on civilians who have already been stripped of everything. A six-year-old girl playing at her door is not a target of war. She was a child. She had a name. She had a father who carried her body to the hospital because there were no ambulances that could reach them in time.

Palestinian relatives mourning around the shrouded body of a six-year-old girl in a hospital in Khan Younis

The Pattern Continues

Menna Allah Abu Labda is not an anomaly. She is the latest name in a body count that stretches past 50,000 — though the real number, as Gaza's health officials have repeatedly stated, is far higher because thousands remain buried under rubble.

In the same strike, a 31-year-old woman, Hanan Mahmoud, was also killed. A two-month-old baby lost a leg. Seventeen people were wounded. And the world's leaders called it a ceasefire.

On Sunday, Israeli forces killed Mohammad Abu Mallouh in a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp. Israel called him a senior Hamas weapons operative. Palestinian health officials said his wife and their six-month-old child were also killed. The pattern is always the same: a "militant" is named, and the family members erased alongside him are treated as footnotes.

Say Her Name

Menna Allah Abu Labda. Six years old. Khan Younis. Killed by an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment for displaced families on May 25, 2026.

Her name means "the grace of God." She was playing at her door.

The ceasefire held. The helicopters still came. The world still looked away.