Gaza mourns children killed in Israeli strike as death toll rises

reuters_tickers

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Hatem Khaled

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -A Gaza family sat weeping on Saturday over children killed by an Israeli strike as they were getting ready to play soccer, amid an intensified bombardment that Palestinian health authorities said has killed 44 people over the past 24 hours. 

The strike was in Mawasi, a southern coastal area where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter after Israel’s military told them to leave other areas it was bombing in its war against Hamas. 

“The rocket struck them. There were no wanted or targeted people there and there was nobody else in the street. Just the children who were killed yesterday,” said Mohammed Zanoun, a relative of the dead children.

Palestinian health authorities say Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 43,500 people, with another 10,000 believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble. 

Israel launched its offensive in response to the attack on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed border defences and rampaged through Israeli communities killing 1,200 people and seizing around 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies. 

On-off talks for a ceasefire and hostage release deal mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar have made little progress and on Saturday a Qatari official said Doha would pull out of negotiations unless the two sides committed more fully.

The official said Qatar would stop trying to mediate talks until Hamas and Israel “demonstrate a sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table”.

That followed a U.S. official saying on Friday that Washington had asked Qatar to close the Hamas office in Doha after the group rejected a ceasefire proposal. 

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed the report as “an American attempt to send a message of pressure to the movement through the media”.

GAZA STRIKES

The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Friday that nearly 70% of fatalities it had verified in Gaza were women and children. Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva, where the office is based, said it categorically rejected the report, which it said did not accurately reflect realities on the ground. 

Strikes overnight and on Saturday morning killed at least 40 Palestinians across the enclave, health officials said. In one airstrike on a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City six people including two journalists were killed, while another killed two at a tent inside Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza Strip, they said.

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said the deaths of Mohammad and Zahara Abu Skhaila raised the number of journalists killed by Israeli fire to 188 since Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond on Saturday to a request for comment on strikes on areas where displaced people were sheltering. 

It says Hamas fighters hide among the civilian population and it hits them when it sees them. Hamas denies hiding among civilians. 

For the past month, Israel’s main military focus has been in northern Gaza, the first part of the tiny, crowded territory that its troops overran early in the conflict last year.

A committee of global food security experts warned on Friday that there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza amid the renewed fighting. 

Israel’s military said 11 trucks of food, water and medical supplies had been delivered into the north Gaza areas of Jabalia and Beit Hanoun on Saturday and said the famine assessment was based on “partial, biased data”. 

It said it was preparing to open the Kissufim crossing into Gaza to expand aid routes.   

(Reporting by Hatem Khaled in Khan Younis, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Emily Rose in Jerusalem and Andrew Mills in DohaWriting by Angus McDowallEditing by Giles Elgood and Frances Kerry)