Saja El-Khawas, a six-year-old Palestinian-British girl, died in hospital on Friday, three days after her mother, father, and teenage sister drowned in the sea off Shoreham, a coastal town in West Sussex on England's southern coast. Sussex Police confirmed her death, completing a tragedy that wiped out an entire family in a matter of days.

The family — Hassan El-Khawas, 55, his wife Zeina Alayn, 37, and their 14-year-old daughter Sara — died at the scene on Tuesday afternoon after getting into difficulty in the water near Shoreham Fort. Saja had been pulled from the sea and rushed to hospital in critical condition, but she did not survive. The family had travelled from their home in London to spend a day at the beach during an intense heatwave gripping the United Kingdom. According to the Palestinian Forum in Britain, the family encountered strong currents in the water; Sara is believed to have become entangled in a fishing net, prompting her father to try to free her, before her mother Zeina also entered the water in an attempt to rescue them, with young Saja following. Police said they cannot confirm all the details of how events unfolded, but based on CCTV footage and initial witness accounts, investigators believe the incident was a tragic accident with no third-party involvement.

The family's roots trace back to the Rashidieh refugee camp in southern Lebanon, one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps in the country, according to the Palestinian embassy in London. Hassan El-Khawas had come to the United Kingdom as a refugee and held British citizenship. Sussex Police's Chief Superintendent James Collis described Saja's death as