Child Profile: Alaa Naim Nazmi Balata

Name: Alaa Naim Nazmi Balata

Date of birth: 29 December 1999

Date of death: 29 July 2014

Fourteen-year-old Alaa from Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip had a small notebook to write down her dreams, hopes, drawings and little secrets. Her hobby was writing. ‘Her ambition was to be a teacher in the future,’ said her brother, Alaa, 18.

Alaa was killed in Balata family massacre along with her mother and nine others from the same family when their house was targeted by Israeli missiles. "Alaa’s death left a huge vacuum in my life," added her surviving brother.