Gazan brothers are killed days after the ceasefire was announced, as a tense Middle East awaits more hostages releases this weekend and more violence in Israel’s bloody West Bank operation
Two Palestinian brothers have been killed by Israeli tankfire in Gaza as a shaky ceasefire entered its sixth day.
Troops claimed they opened fire on armed Gazan men who posed a threat to them in Rafah on the southern edge of the Strip. The targeted attack happened on Thursday as Palestinians scoured a mountain of rubble for more than 14,000 bodies of missing people. More than 120 corpses were recovered in the past day and taken to hospital across the Gaza Strip even as more violence raged in the West Bank.
On the sixth day of the fragile ceasefire it is feared more than 47,000 Palestinians have died in the 15-month war which has temporarily halted for phase one of a peace deal. Since the fragile ceasefire took hold in Gaza, Israel has launched a major military operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. That attack this week has claimed 12 Palestinian lives and injured more than 40 as Israel hunts down militant gunmen and sent thousands fleeing their homes.
Israel’s military and intelligence service said a “series of operations” will be carried out in Jenin as Israel fights a “multi-front war” that has shifted to the occupied West Bank. It comes in the countdown to a second prisoner-hostage swap in the ceasefire, during which four female Israeli hostages are set to be freed on Saturday and close to 100 Palestinian prisoners released.
The West Bank has some 750,000 illegal Israeli settlers some of whom have attacked Palestinians, who fear Israeli violence will spread in the West Bank whilst troops have withdrawn to the edges of Gaza. The UN’s humanitarian chief says was in Gaza has seen children killed, starved, frozen to death, orphaned and separated from their families.
Tom Fletcher told a UN Security Council meeting “a generation has been traumatised. He said: “Conservative estimates indicate that over 17,000 children are without their families in Gaza.” Fletcher did not give any figures on the number of children killed. But he said, “Some died before their first breath – perishing with their mothers in childbirth”.
An estimated 150,000 pregnant women and new mothers are also “in desperate need of health services”, Fletcher said. He said a million Gazan children need mental health and psycho-social support for depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
