DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The boy was dead, limp and bloodied on the floor of a morgue at Shifa Hospital, the latest casualty in Gaza. But his father, Yusuf Zawara, could not accept it as he knelt over his son, his hair dusted and his clothes stained with blood.
Zawara said he was trying to wake his son. “He’s sleeping. He’ll wake up now. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s fine,” he told the Associated Press on Saturday. “I’m just cleaning his face. He’s sleepy. He didn’t sleep all night because of the bombing.”
The hospital said 15-year-old Mohammad and his 13-year-old cousin were killed by an Israeli strike as they searched for firewood. It was Gaza’s winter, with limited shelter options for many residents and no central electricity since the first days of the war.
A relative, Arafat al-Zawara, said the boys were killed in an area Israel’s military has said is safe for Palestinians, about 500 meters (yards) from the “Yellow Line” that separates Israeli-controlled areas in eastern Gaza from the rest of the strip. “They were targeted directly, not through any fault of their own,” he told AP.
Israel’s military denied that the victims were children. It said it targeted militants it claimed crossed the “yellow line” and planted explosives, threatening troops.
In the morgue, Zawara patted his son’s face, wiped bloody traces with a fingertip and rocked the head back and forth. “Get up!” he said, then asked why they had not run after the strike. He scolded the boy, saying, “They hit you with a missile. You couldn’t escape? Run. People, run! Why didn’t you run away?”
Zawara eventually stopped trying to revive his son and leaned cheek to cheek with him. Then he turned to his son’s cousin, reaching for the 13-year-old and shaking him. “Sulaiman, get up so we can get some wings and grill them!” the man said. “Get up, get up, get up, my nephew! Come on, get up, why are you dying?!”
The conflict has also intensified concerns about winter deaths and shortages of basic services. Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 480 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since a ceasefire began on Oct. 10, in a war sparked by a Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Health Ministry says at least nine children have died of severe cold in the past weeks in Gaza, where temperatures drop below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) at night and storms blow in from the Mediterranean. The ministry is part of the Hamas-led government and maintains detailed casualty records that AP said are generally viewed as reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.
Israel disputes the ministry’s figures but has not provided its own.