By Moustafa Maged Haboosh and Hamdi Yildiz
(AA): Three Palestinian children were killed on Sunday by an Israeli airstrike near the eastern border of Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry.
“The ambulance crews transported bodies of three children aged between 12 and 14 from the site of the Israeli airstrike in the eastern region of southern Gaza,” ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said in a statement. The attack took place near the perimeter fence area, between Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, in the Gaza Strip
The children were transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, Al-Qidra added.
The army claimed that “the children were trying to tamper with the security fence and apparently planted an explosive device”.
The three Palestinian children were killed in Palestinian lands near the perimeter fence, and did not cross it, according to the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Health Ministry has official identified the three slain children as Khaled Bassam Mahmoud Abu Sa’id, 14, Abdul-Hamid Mohammad Abdul-Aziz Abu Thaher, 13, and Mohammad Ibrahim Abdullah Satri, 13.
It added that the three children, are from Wadi al-Salqa area, in Deir al-Balah governorate, in central Gaza.
For the last seven months, Palestinians in Gaza have been staging regular demonstrations along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone to demand the right to return to their homes in historical Palestine from which they were driven in 1948.
They also demand an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.
Since the rallies began on March 30, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed – and thousands more injured – by Israeli troops deployed along the other side of the buffer zone.
[Photo: A dead body is carried by a hospital staff to the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital after Israeli airstrike hit the eastern part of Gaza Strip in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on October 29, 2018. Photographer: Ali Jadallah/AA]