On The Ground newsletter: Get a weekly dispatch from our international correspondents Get a weekly dispatch from our international correspondents Get a weekly international news dispatch Email * SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice
Dania Alfaranji should be well into her final year at a prestigious English boarding school. Like many teenage girls, she imagines what her dorm would look like and what clothes she might wear. The world should be full of possibilities.
Instead, the 16-year-old is living in a tent in the back yard of a building in az-Zawayda in southern Gaza, a town reduced to rubble by airstrikes. She gathers firewood, waits desperately for aid trucks to deliver food, and hopes to make it out of the Gaza Strip alive.
To make life worse, she has been separated from her mother, Hayat Ghalayini, who lives in the UK, and has been forced to grow up too quickly.
Dania was 14 when war broke out on 7 October 2023.
Continue Reading on The Independent
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.