FAMILY MEMBERS SAID two Palestinian boys were killed in an Israeli drone strike in Gaza today, with Israel’s military saying it had identified two suspects “posing an immediate threat”.
The military said it saw two people who “conducted suspicious activities”.
Uncles of the two brothers told news agency AFP the boys were aged eight and 10, and had gone out looking for firewood.
The fatal drone strike happened around the so-called Yellow Line within the Gaza Strip, a boundary marked with yellow concrete blocks.
Under the fragile, US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli army withdrew to positions behind the Yellow Line.
Since the ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, there have been multiple deadly incidents involving Israeli forces firing on people in the area of the Yellow Line.
Khan Yunis in the Palestinian Territories, pictured earlier this month. Abed Rahim Khatib / dpa/Alamy Live News
Abed Rahim Khatib / dpa/Alamy Live News / dpa/Alamy Live News
Mahmud Bassal, the spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, told AFP that two brothers were killed in an Israeli drone strike in Bani Suheila, east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, at around 8:30am local time.
Bassal named the brothers as Fadi and Jumaa Tamer Abu Assi.
Alaa Abu Assi, an uncle of the two boys, said they were “innocent children who have no rockets and no bombs”, adding that they were “aged eight and 10″.
“They were gathering firewood,” he told AFP.
Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis confirmed receiving the bodies of the children, who it said were buried by their family in the afternoon.
Israeli soldiers “identified two suspects who crossed the Yellow Line, conducted suspicious activities on the ground, and approached IDF (military) troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip, posing an immediate threat to them,” the military said in a statement.
“Following the identification, the IAF (Israeli Air Force) eliminated the suspects in order to remove the threat.”
