TEL AVIV — In the Gaza darkness, an airstrike rips through Rafah, where Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip are seeking refuge.
The chaotic aftermath plays out like so many devastating scenes from the Israel-Hamas war so far: Buildings are leveled into piles of smoldering rubble. Neighbors dig with their bare hands searching for survivors. The dead and wounded are frantically ferried away.
But this time, covered by a mattress and trapped by debris, a child is found. She’s just 10 months old, and her name is Tala Rouqah.
NBC News’ team in Gaza witnessed her dramatic rescue on Thursday night, when the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry said more than 20 were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in southern Gaza, now a major focus of Israel’s military campaign.
Israel’s military hasn’t said what it was targeting, but has said its bombing campaign is designed to dismantle Hamas’ military abilities and rescue Hamas-held hostages.
When Tala is discovered, she is unconscious, but breathing. Volunteers who show up to rescue her chant, “She’s alive, she’s alive,” in Arabic.
Protruding from broken concrete just inches from Tala is her mother’s hand. The rest of her mother is submerged in the rubble.
And just a few feet away is Tala’s father, Ahmad Rouqah, also trapped in the wreckage. With the help of rescuers, he is freed, and ecstatic chants ring out from the men who freed him.
Seconds later, baby Tala is freed, too, and carried to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital by a neighbor.
The next morning, Ahmad is recovering in a different hospital, where he recalls the moments before the strike.
He says the family had fled their home in Gaza City, at Israel’s direction, to Khan Younis, the largest city in the south, where they stayed with relatives until civilians in that city too were told to evacuate. They fled to Rafah, seeking refuge in a house they said had been abandoned and left vacant for several years.
He says they had just finished worshipping…
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