Medical sources told Al Jazeera that 20 Palestinians, including seven children, have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza City since early morning on Friday.
The Israeli military has targeted displaced Palestinian families living in tents or temporary shelters in Gaza City as it carries out its large-scale assault to seize the city.
In the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, Palestinians picked through the detritus of their shelters following an Israeli drone attack on Thursday.
Several children were killed in the attack, including Maha Afana’s son and daughter.
“I checked on my son and I found him lying on his back with blood running down from his nose and bleeding from the back of his head. I started screaming and my brother came and took him from me,” she said.
“Then I went back to check on my second child, my daughter Noor, and found that she was drenched in blood from her head to her feet.”
The Israeli regime’s army claimed it now controls 40 percent of Gaza City and has expanded its assault on residential homes and displacement camps, with the UN children’s fund (UNICEF) describing the current situation as “unthinkable”.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 30 percent of Palestinians killed in Israel’s attacks on Gaza have been children, amounting to 28 children killed every day since October 2023.
Since the start of the Israeli war in October 2023, at least 64,231 people have been killed and 161,583 wounded across Gaza.