Brother and sister killed in Israeli attack on Gaza ‘safe zone’

Israeli forces have killed another Palestinian child in Gaza, as they continue to attack tents sheltering displaced people despite the “ceasefire” that designated parts of the Strip as “safe zones”.

An Israeli drone attack on two makeshift tents killed two siblings on Saturday, 15-year-old Islam Moussa and her 30-year-old brother, Abdullah Moussa, medical sources said.
Gaza’s civil defence said its teams recovered seven injured people from the attack site in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis. They were taken to Nasser Hospital and the Red Cross Hospital.

In the hospital’s courtyard, relatives wept over the bodies of the brother and sister covered in white burial shrouds.

Following an earlier Israeli bombardment of southern Gaza, a 10-year-old Palestinian child died from his wounds.

A source at Nasser Hospital told Anadolu news agency that Walid Youssef Abu Jazar died after being wounded days earlier in an Israeli strike on al-Mawasi.
The Israeli military also struck a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in western Gaza City, wounding at least 12 people, according to al-Shifa Hospital.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s ambulance service said most of the wounded were women and two people were critically wounded.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel has kept up its attacks despite the “ceasefire”.

“Maximum pressure has been a core tenet of the Israeli policy since the ceasefire was reached last year,” he said.“In the past hours, we got reports that Israeli drones hit makeshift tents in the al-Mawasi area, which was designated under the terms of the ceasefire as a safe area for thousands of Palestinians,” he added, about the attack that killed two people.

“We are witnessing the intensification of drones that we’re still hearing overhead,” Azzoum added
Israel deliberately targeting children
Israel’s killing of Palestinian children has come under renewed focus after a United Nations report documented the targeting of youngsters in Gaza. The report found that children made up about 30 percent of those killed since the start of the genocide in October 2023.

Children’s rights campaigner Rachel Accurso, known as Ms Rachel, spoke alongside one of the report’s co-authors and said the world had failed to stop the slaughter.

“We are watching children who are just like our own try to survive a genocide and yet there’s been no action, no accountability,” she said on Friday.

Chris Sidoti, a UN commissioner who co-authored the report, called its findings “absolutely heartbreaking”.

“States have obligations to act, legal obligations to act,” Sidoti added. “We should have been acting three and a half years ago, but it’s not too late to start.”

Gaza’s health ministry says Israel’s genocidal war has killed at least 73,043 Palestinians since October 2023 and wounded 173,417.

Israeli forces have killed 1,031 Palestinians and wounded 3,309 since last October’s “ceasefire” began, the ministry added.