Gaza City : All 11-year-old Yasmin Al-Bakri remembers is that her mother was baking bread. Then she woke up in a hospital bed in Gaza to discover that both legs and her right arm were in bandages and she was suffering severe burns and fractures after her house was hit by an Israeli air strike. She also learned that she had lost most of her family.
Yasmin survived, but figures issued on Wednesday by UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, showed that 419 Palestinian children have been killed in the nearly month-long Gaza war. That compares with 350 children who died in Israel’s three-week ground offensive in the enclave five years ago. At least six Israeli children were reportedly injured due to rocket fire from Gaza in the past month, according to preliminary UNICEF figures. Yasmin says she was told her mother, her six-year-old sister and her three-month-old brother were killed along with her uncle and her cousin when an Israeli missile hit their house two days ago. Details on child deaths emerged as life in the battered Gaza Strip began returning to normal Wednesday as a ceasefire held for a second day and Egyptian mediators engaged in shuttle diplomacy on extending the truce.
Shops, banks and markets reopened around the devastated enclave where residents seemed more confident that the 72-hour ceasefire, which began Tuesday, would hold after a month of fighting killed 1,875 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side. Many small businesses reopened for the first time in days and dozens of fishermen also headed back out to sea, an AFP correspondent said. People started repairing damaged property, as the emergency services cleared rubble and searched for bodies in the worst hit areas, including in the Tuffah, Beit Hanun and Shejaiya neighborhoods. Nearly half a million Palestinians out of Gaza’s 1.8 million people were displaced by Israeli bombardment, and many are still sheltering in schools after their homes were flattened in the offensive. In Cairo, efforts accelerated to try to secure a lasting peace after mediators met an Israeli delegation during the night and were to relay their demands to a Palestinian team.
A delegation of Arab foreign ministers, including those of Egypt and Jordan, will visit Gaza “soon” in a show of support for Palestinians, Arab League chief Nabil Al-Arabi said. The ministers will also assess reconstruction needs in the battered enclave after a nearly month-long war between Israel and Hamas, Arabi said.