Amnesty International: It began just after four o’clock on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. Four young boys, all cousins from the same family, were playing football on a Gaza beach.
The Israeli shelling rained down – killing all four children. The mother of one of the boys is pictured, above, outside the morgue in Gaza City on Wednesday.
Since the Israeli military offensive ‘Operation Protective Edge’ launched on 8 July, scores of civilians have been killed and injured. This deadly battle has wreaked further havoc, punishment and devastation on Gaza’s blockaded population, with Gaza’s children caught in the crossfire.
Indiscriminate targeting of civilians is against international law. But countries, including the UK, continue to supply weapons to Israel and potentially facilitate these war crimes.
How many deaths will be enough?
The horrific human toll of the violence is mounting. The past eleven days of violence have seen at least 375 Palestinian deaths (83 of them children) and more than 3,000 injured.
Thousands have fled their homes, or what was left of them. Those that stayed are being denied basic services: over half of Gaza’s population is now without water.
And with the ground invasion now under way, we expect the numbers of civilian casualties and the destruction of Gaza’s crippled infrastructure to increase.
British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg spoke out against Israel’s retaliatory shelling, dubbing it ‘deliberately disproportionate’ and amounting to ‘collective punishment’.
Palestinian armed groups have also launched dozens of indiscriminate rockets into Israel. Two Israelis have been killed.
We are not innocent bystanders
Last year the UK sold £6.3 million-worth of arms to Israel. We know that some arms sold by the UK government have been used to commit human rights violations in Gaza in the past.
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