'As she blew out her 10th birthday candles, my daughter wished to not be murdered... like her dad'

AS she blew out the candles on her 10th birthday cake last month, schoolgirl Mia Margolis made a tragic wish: to not be murdered.

- Hanna Geissler

The traumatised youngster's father Saar was killed by Hamas on October 7 while defending their farming community close to the Gaza border.

The Daily Express visited Kibbutz Kissufim this week and found a ghost town of abandoned houses riddled with bullet holes, broken glass and forgotten belongings.

Saar's family lived here for 17 years. His wife Yasmin now stays in a temporary home near the Dead Sea with daughters Mia and Tavor, eight.

Burned

Yasmin, 35, said of her eldest girl's birthday: "When she blew out the candles I asked her, 'What do you want? Imagine the greatest thing. Do you want to travel the world?' "And she said, 'I don't want to get murdered'. Tavor, the younger, she has a lot of anger attacks. I believe it's from missing her father." When the rockets began screeching overhead early on October 7, the family hid in their home's safe room and Saar joked with his daughters to distract them.