One in five of Israeli airstrike victims are children

One out of every five Palestenians killed in Gaza over the past week are children. Of the 172 persons killed in seven days and nights after Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, around 30% are women and children.

The count by is based on a list of the fatalities provided by Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra.

The dead include 29 women, of whom seven are under the age of 18. They also include 24 men under 18. About half are small boys aged 10 or under, the youngest an 18-month-old baby.

A number of news agencies reported that one of the latest victims was a three-year old boy, Saher Abu Namous, who was killed in a strike in the Tal al-Zatar neighborhood.

The child was taken to a Gaza hospital with a blown away cranium. The video of the scenes at the hospital can be viewed here.

“He was playing and smiling next to his mother when missile shrapnel divided his head,” a family member was quoted as saying.

“His father took him to the hospital screaming ‘Wake up, my son! I bought toys for you, please wake up!’”

It is not immediately possible to independently verify how many of the 119 men killed are civilians. Two of them are aged 75 and 80. However, the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said most of the victims were civilians, putting their number at more than 130, among them 35 children and 26 women.

Fearing for their lives, about 17,000 people have taken shelter in installations of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, the agency said in a statement.

Aircraft struck three training facilities of Hamas's military wing, the Qassam Brigades, around the coastal territory early on Monday, but caused no casualties, medics and eyewitnesses said.

However, since Israel launched its assault on targets across the densely populated coastal enclave on Tuesday, medics say about 30% of the more than 100 Palestinians killed have been women and children.

Efforts to treat the more than 700 injured are hampered by lack of basic medical supplies and drugs, a doctor at Shifa Hospital said.