Israel has killed as many as 28 children, 17 of whose deaths and identities have been confirmed so far, as violence between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups has continued to escalate since Monday.
The Palestine branch of the Defense for Children International organization confirmed the killing of at least 13 minors since Monday.
On May 10, 15-year-old Mohammad Saber Ibrahim Suleiman and his father were killed instantly by an Israeli drone-fired missile while they were working on their agricultural land outside the city of Jabalia. Doctors at a hospital in Jabalia where Mohammad’s body was transferred reported that there were shrapnel wounds all over his body.
In a subsequent incident, a homemade rocket fired by a Palestinian armed group fell short and killed eight Palestinians, including two children. Sixteen-year-old Mustafa Mohammad Mahmoud Obaid was killed in the blast and five-year-old Baraa Wisam Ahmad al-Gharabli succumbed to his wounds later in the day.
A third blast in Beit Hanoun on the northeast edge of the Gaza Strip that occurred the same day killed six Palestinian children as well as two adults.
Cousins 10-year-old Rahaf Mohammad Attalla Al-Masri and two-year-old Yazan Sultan Mohammad Al-Masri and brothers six-year-old Marwan Yousef Attalla al-Masri and 11-year-old Ibrahim Yousef Attalla al-Masri along with 11-year-old Hussein Muneer Hussein Hamad and 16-year-old Ibrahim Abdullah Mohammad Hassanain were among those killed. The al-Masri family was killed while reportedly harvesting wheat in a field outside their home with their children playing nearby.
The following day, Israeli airstrikes killed at least three more children, with warplanes carrying out hundreds of attacks on densely-populated civilian areas across the Gaza Strip.
Fifteen-year-old Lina Iyad Fathi Sharir and both her parents were killed when an Israeli warplane completely destroyed a two-story residential building with two missiles fired on Gaza’s Al-Manara neighborhood.
Sharir’s two-year-old sister Mina is currently in critical condition with third-degree burns at Shifa Hospital.
Two more Palestinian children -- four-year-old Zaid Mohammad Odeh Telbani and 13-year-old Hala Hussein Rafat Rifi -- were killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike in Gaza, when an Israeli warplane targeted the Salha residential building in the Tal Al-Hawa neighborhood.
The same attack killed Telbani’s mother Rima Telbani, who was five months pregnant. His two-year-old sister Miriam is missing and is presumed dead.
Seventeen-year-old Bashar Ahmad Ibrahim Samour was killed the next morning near the Gaza perimeter fence in Abasan Al-Jadida. Israeli forces, deployed on the opposite side of the fence, shot Samour, who was working as a farmer and connecting irrigation pipes at the time.
Palestinian authorities have confirmed the killing of at least four more children so far in Israeli attacks, including Yehya Khalifa (14), Hamza Ali (12), Ammar Al-Amoor (11) and Hamada Al-Amoor (13).
Israel continues to target Gaza with heavy bombardment, which has also caused heavy damage to residential buildings across the enclave.
To date, seven Israelis have been killed in the recent violence -- six of them in rocket attacks, in addition to a soldier killed when an anti-tank guided missile struck his jeep.
Tensions have been running high in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem over the past month as Israeli settlers swarmed in following a court order for the eviction of Palestinian families in the area.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed the entire city in 1980 -- a move that has never been recognized by the international community.
