Palestinians celebrated amid another horrific day of bombings when a six-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of her home in Gaza.

Suzy Eshkuntana woke up alone in Gaza’s largest hospital after rescuers eventually lifted her from a building destroyed by a pre-dawn Israeli strike, which killed her mum and all four of her siblings.

Video shows her covered in dust and crying as she is taken to an ambulance.

The young girl had been trapped under debris for seven hours before being reunited with her father in Shifa hospital, where he was also treated for his wounds.

When medics brought them together in neighbouring beds, dad Riyad Eshkuntana told her: ‘Forgive me, my daughter. You screamed to me to come to you, but I couldn’t come.’

The family’s home was hit early on Sunday as Israel bombarded Gaza Cit in a wave of attacks that Gaza health officials said killed 42 people, including 10 children, and raised the death toll from a week of bombardment to 192.

Israel insists it is attacking the Hamas movement which controls the densely populated Gaza Strip, and that along with Islamic Jihad and other militant groups has fired 2,800 rockets towards Israeli cities.

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So far the rocket barrage has killed 10 people in Israel, including two children.

Millions of Israelis have scrambled to ‘safe rooms’ and shelters as rocket warning sirens go off around the clock. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the latest Palestinian deaths.

He told U.S. broadcaster CBS: ‘The reason we have these casualties is because Hamas is criminally attacking us from civilian neighbourhoods.’

The military claimed that the strike on the family home was in the same area as an Israeli strike on a militant tunnel system in Gaza.

It said the collapse of the system caused the houses above to collapse, and led to unintended civilian casualties.

Dozens of rescue workers, police officers, relatives and neighbours gathered at the wreckage of the Eshkuntana house during the search and rescue operation.

After several hours workers under the collapsed walls began to chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ – meaning God is greatest – as hope grew that someone would be brought out alive.

At the hospital, relatives anxiously asked for details as the casualties arrived.

‘Is this Yehya? It is Yehya?’ they asked in the reception hall, shortly before medics told them that the four-year-old boy, Suzy’s brother, was dead.

Two of the women fainted.

Minutes later, the body of a girl was rushed in.

A relative asked: ‘They brought Dana. Dana, Dana, are you okay?’

But the young girl was also dead, along with another brother and sister.

Doctors said Suzy was bruised but had no severe injuries, and she was brought to a hospital bed next to her father.

Riyad said he had believed his family would be ok because there were doctors living in the same building, and he had put the children in what they believed to be a safe room.

‘Suddenly, a strange rocket, like fire and flame, destroyed two walls,’ he told Reuters.

He and his wife ran to check on their children when a second explosion hit, collapsing the ceiling.

Riyad added: ‘I heard my son Zain calling: “Daddy, daddy”. His voice was okay, but I couldn’t turn to look at him because I was trapped’.

When rescuers first called out for survivors, Riyad was too weak to shout back, but when someone returned half an hour later he was able to get their attention.

Lying on the hospital bed with his head in a bandage, the widowed father said that at first he had wanted to die.

‘I was filled with all the anger of the universe, but when I heard that one of my daughters was alive, I said thank God because this girl might capture some – even a little – of my daughters’ smile because she is their sister.’

The family tragedy comes amid continuing violence in the region, with international pleas for calm being ignored by both sides, who blame each other for the fighting.

Gaza City was in flames again overnight into Monday, as the residential district of Rimal, controlled by Hamas, erupted in fire balls during massive Israeli bombardment.

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