Four children were killed when Israel resumed its heavy bombardment of the occupied Gaza Strip after the expiry on Thursday afternoon of a five-hour \u201chumanitarian ceasefire\u201d requested by the United Nations.<\/p>\n
Another child died of injuries sustained in earlier Israeli attacks.<\/p>\n
By Thursday evening in Gaza, at least fourteen Palestinians had been killed in Israeli attacks before and after the brief ceasefire, bringing the total to 237 fatalities since Israel\u2019s round-the-clock assault began on 7 July,\u00a0according to the health ministry in Gaza.<\/p>\n
The number of children killed has risen to 53, including four young boys from the Baker family\u00a0slaughtered by Israeli shelling in front of international media as they played on a beach\u00a0on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Defence for Children International Palestine, which documents the deaths of children,\u00a0said\u00a0the toll from Israel\u2019s current campaign \u201cis now at its highest since Israel\u2019s December 2008 military incursion, Operation Cast Lead, which resulted in the deaths of 352 children.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 1,770 people have been injured, straining Gaza\u2019s health services which face\u00a0severe shortages of medications and supplies.<\/p>\n
Almost eighty percent of the dead are civilians, and almost half of the injured are women and children,\u00a0according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).<\/p>\n
Three children from a single family were killed when an Israeli air strike hit their home in the Sabra section of Gaza City on Thursday evening.<\/p>\n
The children were named as Fulla Tariq Shuhaibar, Jihad Issam Shuhaibar and Wasim Issam Shuhaibar, all young children whose ages were not specified.<\/p>\n
A video uploaded to YouTube shows the dead children lying in a medical facility while a distraught medical official denounces their killings as a \u201ccrime.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day there is a massacre,\u201d the official says.<\/p>\n
In a separate incident, Rahaf Khalil Jbour, aged four, was killed in an Israeli air attack on her neighborhood of al-Manara in Khan Younis.<\/p>\n
Also on Thursday, Yasin al-Humeidi, aged four, died of injuries he suffered in an earlier air attack on Gaza City.<\/p>\n
Among those killed on Thursday were 71-year-old Zaynab al-Abadla of Khan Younis and 67-year-old Muhammad Abdulrahman Hassouna of Rafah.<\/p>\n
Israel has also continued its systematic destruction of civilian homes.<\/p>\n
By the end of 16 July, Israel had destroyed or severely damaged 1,660 residential buildings, making 9,900 people homeless, OCHA reported.<\/p>\n
Another 22,600 are seeking shelter in UN-run schools, having fled from Israeli shelling or threats of attack, principally in the northern and eastern sectors of the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
Nine hundred thousand people \u2013 half the population of Gaza \u2013 are \u201cwithout water supply due to inability to repair or operate infrastructure,\u201d OCHA said.<\/p>\n
Human Rights Watch\u00a0said\u00a0this week that Israeli air attacks it investigated \u201chave been targeting apparent civilian structures and killing civilians in violation of the laws of war.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group called on Israel to \u201cend unlawful attacks that do not target military objectives and may be intended as collective punishment or broadly to destroy civilian property.\u201d<\/p>\n
Intense\u00a0ceasefire negotiations\u00a0are ongoing in Cairo, and earlier today there were premature reports that a ceasefire had been reached.<\/p>\n
However the clearest sign that there was no agreement could be seen in the tweets of journalists and residents of Gaza who testified that the Israeli campaign of terror continues.<\/p>\n
In a worrying development late Thursday in Gaza, The Electronic Intifada contributor\u00a0Joe Catron\u00a0reported that a heavy attack had begun on or near al-Wafa hospital, which had previously been threatened by Israel.<\/p>\n