The boys’ father said that their bodies were torn to pieces by Israel’s strike.
Israel’s killing of two young Palestinian boys in Gaza for supposedly crossing the Israeli military’s ever-shifting yellow line last week is “horrific” and must be investigated, the UN has said.
“It’s hard to see how two boys, eight and 10, can be considered a threat. And there needs to be an investigation and accountability into what happened,” said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in remarks to the press on Wednesday.
Dujarric said the killing was “horrific, to say the least.”
On Saturday, Israeli forces killed two brothers, Juma and Fadi Tamer Abu Assi, in a drone strike east of Khan Younis. The young boys were sent out to gather firewood for the family, their father told CNN, and never came back.
The boys’ small bodies were torn to pieces by the blast, their father, Muhammad Abu Assi, said.
“I removed the shroud and hugged them. My little Juju’s head was blown off; God rest his soul,” he told CNN. “His arms were severed and parts of his torso were gone.”
“Fadi’s right hand and left leg were cut off,” he said.
Israel acknowledged killing the children. In a post on X, the Israeli military said that soldiers “identified two suspects who crossed the yellow line” and “approached the troops.” The children posed a “threat” to the soldiers, who “eliminated the suspects to remove the threat,” the military said.
Israel has killed numerous Palestinians who they alleged crossed the yellow line, which Israel is using to further entrench and make indefinite its military occupation of Gaza. The region makes up 54 percent of Gaza, and is deemed a kill zone by the Israeli military where no Palestinians are allowed to enter.
The yellow line is invisible, and is not clearly marked by the Israeli military. As a result, Palestinians often cross the line unintentionally, and are killed by Israeli forces.
Further still, the yellow line seems to be constantly shifting and growing, Palestinians say, sometimes rendering an area that was safe one day into a kill zone the very next.
The Gaza Health Ministry announced on Saturday that the official death toll of Israel’s genocide has surpassed 70,000, including over 20,000 children. This includes at least 360 people killed since the “ceasefire” agreement began, with officials documenting over 500 Israeli violations of the agreement thus far.
The true death toll of the genocide is likely far higher, experts have said. A study updated last week said that the toll due to violent death — excluding causes like starvation — “likely exceeds 100,000.”
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