In another attack later Wednesday morning, four Palestinian children and three others, all from the Khalili family, were killed in an Israeli shelling on the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City.
Another 40 Palestinians were killed in various Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip.
Later in the day, despite a four-hour humanitarian ceasefire that began at 3:00 p.m., Israeli forces shelled a market in Shujaiyya as well as number of homes across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 35, including a journalist.
The Red Cross confirmed the numbers, saying many of the injured would need to be amputated.
UN figures indicate at least three quarters of the dead were civilians.
The more than 240 Palestinian children who have died represent at least 29 percent of civilian casualties, the United Nations Children’s Fund. However, other independent source place this number as high as 350 to 400.
Ceasefire in the Offing ?
Palestinian factions were reportedly heading to Cairo on Wednesday to discuss a temporary humanitarian ceasefire.
However there was no immediate comment from Hamas as to whether that trip would go ahead.
The PLO said it had garnered the Islamist movement’s support for a 24-hour truce, but did not say when it was expected to start.
President Mahmoud Abbas had been in touch with exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on Monday and Tuesday and had “proposed the 24 hour truce,” senior Palestinian official Nabil Shaath told AFP on Tuesday.
“Meshaal and Hamas agreed.”
But Hamas said it had not so far agreed to any new truce and was waiting for Israel to show its hand first.
“When we have an Israeli commitment … on a humanitarian truce, we will look into it but we will never declare a truce from our side while the occupation keeps killing our children,” spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Palestinian factions in Gaza have repeatedly insisted they would not except any long-term ceasefire that did not stipulate the lifting of the siege on Gaza.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had asked for fresh help from Washington in trying to broker a ceasefire.
“Last night we talked, and the prime minister talked to me about an idea and a possibility of a ceasefire,” Kerry said on Tuesday.
Netanyahu had said he “would embrace a ceasefire that permits Israel to protect itself against the tunnels and obviously not be disadvantaged for the great sacrifice they have made thus far.”
