At least 18,885 children are among the more than 62,000 Palestinians killed by Israel since the start of its genocidal war in Gaza nearly two years ago, Gaza’s Government Media Office has said.
The staggering, grim toll comes as the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Tuesday that no place is safe for children in the enclave, where Israeli-induced starvation is rife due to Israel’s blockading of desperately-needed aid and medical supplies.
UN-run schools have become shelters for “hundreds of thousands of people” in Gaza amid constant Israeli bombardments that have levelled homes, UNRWA said.
Palestinians have “sought protection under the UN flag”, only for the shelters to be targeted, becoming a “place for death, including for too many children. No place is safe for children in Gaza. Ceasefire now”, the agency said.
Citing the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, UNRWA noted that in the past five months of the war, since Israel unilaterally shattered a ceasefire deal and resumed attacks, “an average of over 540 children have been killed every month, per reports”.
The warnings come as at least 51 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn on Tuesday. Among them are at least eight aid seekers who lost their lives when Israeli forces opened fire near the United States and Israeli-backed GHF aid distribution sites, a daily deadly gauntlet Palestinians have suffered, leading to nearly 2,000 deaths since late May.
Hospitals in Gaza said at least eight people were killed in attacks on tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis, and four more were killed in a strike on a tent in Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza.
Israeli forces are also stepping up an assault on Gaza City, despite global warnings urging Israel to cease expanding operations there. An air raid in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood killed at least four people and wounded others, health officials said.
In southern Gaza City, Israeli forces blew up houses, while heavy fire was reported in the Tuffah neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir-el-Balah, said Israeli forces have been launching “a deadly barrage of air strikes on densely populated areas” in Gaza City.
“In addition to destroying over 450 residential blocks in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood, Israel’s operations have now expanded to the nearby Sabra area. These areas lead to the main heart of Gaza City,” Abu Azzoum said.
Meanwhile, key mediator Qatar has confirmed that Hamas responded positively to a Gaza ceasefire proposal, including a 60-day truce and partial captives-for-prisoners exchange.
Two Israeli officials on Tuesday said Israel is studying Hamas’s response to the proposal, without providing more details. But Israeli media reported that the far-right Israeli government wants all the captives held in Gaza, alive and dead, returned all at once.
Attacks on Gaza City intensify, ceasefire proposal in balance
Efforts to pause the fighting gained new momentum over the past week. Mediators Qatar and Egypt have been pushing to restart indirect talks between the sides on a US-backed ceasefire plan.
The proposal includes the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and an unspecified number of imprisoned women and minors, in return for 10 living captives and the bodies of 18 dead from Gaza, according to a Hamas official.
Two Egyptian security sources confirmed the details and added that Hamas has requested the release of hundreds of detainees from Gaza as well.
Israel says a total of 50 captives remain in Gaza, 20 of them still alive.
Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said the 60-day truce deal would include “a pathway to a comprehensive agreement to end the war”.
The proposal includes a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces, which presently occupy 75 percent of Gaza, and the entry of more humanitarian aid into the enclave, where a population of 2.2 million people is increasingly facing an Israeli-induced famine.
Israel’s government has not officially responded, but Israeli media, citing senior officials, suggest the government is dissatisfied with a limited prisoner-captive exchange and may insist on the release of all 50 Israeli captives as part of any deal.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has calculated that it is no longer in his “interest” to agree to a partial ceasefire.
“I think for him [Netanyahu] he is winning the war; for him, Hamas is on the way to defeat; for him, there’s a green light from Washington; and I just don’t think, except in a very, very exceptional circumstance, that he will agree”, to a deal, Bishara said.
Israeli tanks completed taking control of the Zeitoun suburb in Gaza City and continued to pound the nearby area of Sabra. Local health authorities said dozens of people had been trapped in their houses because of the shelling.
Among them is Suha Maqat, a once-celebrated para-athlete trapped in Gaza City, alone and blind in one eye.
Like other Palestinians with disabilities, her situation means it is impossible to follow Israel’s forced displacement orders, which have already forced thousands to flee over the past few days.
The spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence, Mahmoud Basal, said the situation was “very dangerous and unbearable” in the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods, where he said “artillery shelling continues intermittently”.
Sabra resident Hussein al-Dairi, 44, said that “tanks are firing shells and mortars, and drones, are firing bullets and missiles” in the neighbourhood.
“We heard on the news that Hamas had agreed to a truce, but the occupation is escalating the war against us, the civilians,” he added.
More Palestinians have also died from malnutrition and starvation, including three reported in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said. It said that 154 adults have died of malnutrition since late June, when it began counting such deaths, and 112 children have died of hunger since the war began.
