A number of Palestinians have been killed by an Israeli air strike on a house close to a school sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza.
Israeli warplanes struck a home near Ahmed Abdelaziz School run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the Khan Younis refugee camp, the official Wafa news agency reported.
It said at least nine Palestinians were killed, including seven children, in the Israeli air strike on the home of the al Bakri family. It added there are family members still under the rubble.
The news spread quickly on social media, as grisly images of dead and bloodied toddlers lined up side by side on a hospital stretcher stirred outrage in besieged Gaza and occupied West Bank.
Bandaged and caked in dust, the bodies were brought to the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis along with three other dead members of the Bakri family. Photographers swarmed the operation room as wo men covered their eyes and doctors wept.
“This is a massacre,” hospital director Dr. Yousef Al Akkad said, his voice choking with emotion. “Let the world see, these are just children.”
In the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, a toddler was killed and other people sustained wounds from an Israeli air strike on the camp.
Eyewitnesses told Anadolu news agency that Israeli raids on residential buildings in Rafah city south of Gaza left at least 20 Palestinians dead.
Israeli forces also shot dead two Palestinian teenagers in the occupied West Bank during protests, Palestinian officials said, while WAFA news agency said Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank village of Budrus.
