{"id":745771,"date":"2026-08-22T03:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T03:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/745771\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T03:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T03:48:10","slug":"palestinian-british-girl-6-dies-days-after-family-drowned-off-uk-coast-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/745771\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinian-British girl, 6, dies days after family drowned off UK coast | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saja El-Khawas\u2019s death follows that of her mother, father, and sister on Tuesday, all of whom drowned.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Published On 22 Aug 202622 Aug 2026<\/p>\n

A six-year-old Palestinian-British girl whose parents and sister drowned earlier this week has also died in hospital, according to local police.<\/p>\n

Saja el-Khawas was taken to hospital in critical condition on Tuesday but has since died, Sussex police said Friday.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

Saja\u2019s father Hassan El-Khawas, 55, her mother Zeina Alayn, 37, and her 14-year-old sister Sara El-Khawas all died at the scene<\/a> after getting into difficulty in the water at Shoreham, Sussex, on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The family lived in London but travelled to Shoreham to visit the beach as the United Kingdom sweltered under its latest heatwave of the year.<\/p>\n

An investigation into what happened remains open, but the current theory is that it was a \u201ctragic accident, with no third-party involvement\u201d, the police said.<\/p>\n

British newspaper the Daily Telegraph reported on Tuesday, citing the \u200cPalestinian embassy, that the family was originally from the Rashidieh refugee camp in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Hassan reportedly came to the UK as a refugee, and previously lived in the Rashidieh camp, one of the most populous Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham previously described what happened to the el-Khawas family as a \u201cterrible family tragedy\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Palestinian Forum in Britain held a gathering to commemorate the family on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Drownings have surged across Europe as people seek relief from the heatwave on the continent, with incidents reported in France, Germany and the UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saja El-Khawas\u2019s death follows that of her mother, father, and sister on Tuesday, all of whom drowned. Published…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745772,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[591,59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-745771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-europe","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}