LONDON: At least four Palestinian children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli attacks in the past six days, according to news reports.
Palestinian medics said on Wednesday that an Israeli strike hit a tent in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, killing four people, including a 10-year-old child, Reuters reported.
On Tuesday, a child was killed and others were wounded in a drone strike on a vehicle south of Gaza City, Palestinian media reported.
Another child was killed on Friday while fetching water in Gaza City, the reports said.
In the occupied West Bank, a 16-year-old boy was killed and two other children were wounded by Israeli gunfire during a raid at the Qalandia refugee camp, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported.
On Sunday, a four-month-old infant died after an Israeli military checkpoint west of Ramallah delayed his transfer for urgent medical treatment for more than an hour, Palestinian media reported.
The deaths came after a report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel said that Israeli authorities and security forces had deliberately targeted Palestinian children.
Save the Children said in a statement on Wednesday that at least 11 Palestinian children had been killed by Israeli forces since the report was published on June 23.
The charity renewed its call for urgent international intervention.
“The killing today of another child should not just be another statistic — this is a precious life that has survived 1,000 days of war, displacement and hunger only to be shattered in seconds,” Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, said in the statement.
“This child was a family’s whole world. In just two weeks, 11 more Palestinian children have been killed in cold blood and another’s life cut short as he waits for lifesaving care. Children are meant to be off-limits in war — this is the rule of law.
“Yet the world, in its disgraceful inaction, is sending the message that Palestinians are exempt,” Alhendawi said.
“Despite the alarm bells, despite the reports and the data, Israeli forces are getting away with killing children so regularly that the world barely seems to blink an eyelid. Whether by bullets or by being denied access to lifesaving medical care, each death reflects a profound failure to protect children.
“This is total impunity. The indiscriminate targeting of Palestinian children must end now.”
Save the Children called on governments to halt arms transfers to Israel and comply with the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 advisory opinion on Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The court said that Israel’s continued presence in the territories was “unlawful” and that it must end that presence “as rapidly as possible.”
According to UN figures, Israel has killed 20,000 children and injured 44,000 more since Oct. 7, 2023, when it launched a military campaign in Gaza in retaliation for a deadly Hamas-led attack.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry said in its report that children in Gaza had suffered mass trauma, repeated displacement, starvation and the collapse of education and healthcare services.
It also said that Palestinian children had been arrested and subjected to torture and other severe mistreatment in Israeli detention facilities
“Israeli security forces have also used sexual violence against children as part of the collective shaming and oppression, entrenched within a prolonged, ethnic, gendered and intergenerational pattern of Israeli occupation and hostilities,” it said.
