CNN Airs Graphic Footage of Little Girl’s Corpse After Israeli Strike Kills Eight Children

CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas War and the increasing death toll in Gaza — which has surpassed 33,000, according to local officials — put a face to the children who have become casualties of the ongoing conflict. Correspondent Jeremy Diamond presented a report on Anderson Cooper 360 on Wednesday that showed one of those children “in life and death.”

Anchor Anderson Cooper introduced the segment with a warning of the graphic nature of the content, which portrayed the aftermath of an Israeli air strike that killed a number of Palestinians, including eight children, according to a local hospital. One of those children was 10-year-old Shahed, whose family granted CNN permission to show her after she was killed while playing foosball with other children.

Here was part of Diamond’s report:

The bodies of at least four children splayed around a foosball table. Laughter and shrieks of joy silenced in an instant. Blood now marking where they stood only minutes earlier. “Shahed, no way! Shahed, my beloved!” Her cousin screams from behind the camera. Ten-year-old Shahed is one of those children. Her bright pink pants unmistakable in the arms of the man carrying her away. With her family’s consent, CNN has decided to show Shahed in life and death in order to give a face to this war’s deadly impact on children.

At Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, those who can still be saved arrive alongside those who cannot. Amid the chaos, Shahed’s pink pants dangling as a doctor confirms what is tragically obvious. But Shahid is not alone. She is one of eight children who died on that crowded street in Alma Razi. The hospital says they were killed in an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military said the incident is under review. One after another, their small bodies arrive at the hospital’s morgue and into the arms of grieving parents. His eyes swollen and red, the father of nine-year-old Loujain recounts his daughter’s last moments playing foosball with her friends. “This is my eldest daughter,” he says. “A drone strike hit them while they were playing. They’re all children.” Hours earlier, Yusuf was one of those children playing alongside Shahed and Loujain when he was suddenly killed in a war he did not choose.

Diamond joined Cooper after the report and explained why and how, in this case, the decision was made to show the faces of the dead:

You know, Anderson, we don’t always, we rarely make the decision to actually show the faces of the dead. In this case, we got the family’s permission, and we felt it was important to to humanize the victims of this war. Every ten minutes in Gaza, a child is killed or wounded. Nearly 14,000 children have been killed since the beginning of this war. And, you know, I’ve seen a lot of these videos over the course of the last six months covering this, and there was something about the image of these children around that foosball table who died, three of whom we were able to identify at the morgue subsequently, that just was an absolute gut punch. And I just think it’s important to draw attention to the plight of these children, as well as the children who’ve been orphaned in this war as well.

Watch the video above via CNN.