Sara Dahan, a single mother in Sderot, posted a picture of her 5-year-old daughter cowering in fear and covering her head as a barrage of rockets hit southern Israel on Friday night.

Dahan captioned the photo, which was taken accidentally by a relative as: “My daughter! The little girl whom I promised to protect froze in place and simply couldn’t move despite the fact that we were in the safe room.”

“Her whole body shook, she immobilized herself on the floor and didn’t move, with her hands on her head. My little girl – I’m so sorry that you need to go through this!”

The photo was shared on social media and quickly went viral as Israeli sympathized with the plight of families in southern Israel who live in constant fear of rockets from the Gaza Strip.

Dahan told Ynet that “the picture was taken as we heard the booms. This happens to her since the time we were on the street when a siren went off. She simply lies on the floor, puts her hands on her head, shakes, and mumbles words that even I don’t understand.”

Dahan said she tries picking her daughter off the floor but it doesn’t help. “She simply pulls her shoulder away and doesn’t allow anyone to speak to her. She’s frozen in place.”

Dahan added that her daughter’s fear has worsened recently. “It’s already a month, a month and a half, that she’s like this. Beforehand, she simply would go to the safe room as part of her routine. Then we were on the street and we heard a siren and afterward, she couldn’t move or say a word. She could barely breathe. She simply collapsed.”

“From that point on, she falls to the floor at every little noise. You can say that she was born into this.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)