Tala, 10, went outside to play. She died while still wearing her pink roller skates.

Warning: This article contains graphic images.

Tala Hussam Abu Ajiwa wanted to go outside and play on her pink roller skates.

Tala’s father, Hussam Abu Ajiwa, initially told his 10-year-old daughter she could not. But she “insisted and pleaded,” and like many parents, he and his wife gave in, despite their fear of the frequent explosions and gunfire around their home in Gaza City.

“She went downstairs to play. To enjoy playing like all the other children in the world do,” Abu Ajiwa told an NBC News team on site on Thursday.

But moments later he heard two “tremendous explosions” and ran outside to find his daughter lying under a pile of rubble, wearing roller skates that she had hoped would give her a brief escape from the war that was increasingly dominating her young life.

It was the image of those rollerblades, with their white Velcro straps and row of powder-pink wheels protruding from the white fabric covering Tala’s body, that circulated widely on social media this week.

Tala’s family described the explosion that killed her as an Israeli missile attack.

When contacted by NBC News, the Israeli army said it had no knowledge of a specific attack at the coordinates provided by NBC, but that it had hit a target nearby. Questions about the type of weapon used against the target or whether the Israeli army had launched an investigation into Tala’s killing were not answered.

NBC News has not independently verified the circumstances of the explosions.

Abu Ajiwa said he took his daughter to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, where she died despite desperate efforts to save her life.

In a video obtained by NBC News, the little girl is seen wrapped in a white shroud and lying on the ground on her roller skates beside her, with her loved ones bending down to hold her, kiss her face and say a final goodbye.

Abu Ajiwa said his family, along with about 90 percent of the population, had been displaced within the Gaza Strip for months, according to the United Nations.

Eventually they were able to return to their home in Gaza City, and Abu Ajiwa showed the NBC News team his daughter’s room, decorated in bright pink and white and filled with toys.

In other photos shared by her family, Tala can be seen posing in her school uniform and swimming while holding up peace signs. In one photo, she kisses her father on the cheek.

Now she is among more than 40,800 people who, according to local health authorities, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its months-long offensive following Hamas’s terrorist attacks on October 7.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in May that more than 14,000 children were among those killed, but later clarified that these were only children who had been identified – and that the number has continued to rise in the months since.

The grieving father said he could only hope that his daughter’s murder would shake up the world and prompt it to end “this heinous war.”

“I swear, if the war were over and the bloodshed stopped, I would still be sad for my daughter,” said Abu Ajiwa, holding up the rollerblades – now dyed red. “But I would also be happy that Tala was the reason the massacres stopped.”