Family members carry the bodies of the Palestinians killed by an Israeli airstrike on a residential apartment in the Sabra neighborhood, during their funeral procession in Gaza City on July 21, 2026. (Credit: Omar Al-Qatta/AFP)
The United Nations condemned Tuesday intensifying Israeli military attacks on Gaza which have killed at least 57 Palestinians, including six children, in the past week.
A "cease-fire" agreed between Israel and Hamas in October 2025 remains in place, at least in theory, but it has not halted Israel's attacks on the besieged and war-stricken Strip.
"Nine months after the announcement of a cease-fire, still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza," U.N. rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva.
He decried that "the Israeli military has intensified its attacks in Gaza in recent days, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians."
The Israeli attacks had killed "at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women" from July 13 to 20, Kheetan said, adding that the strikes had targeted residential buildings, at least one tent sheltering internally displaced people, and other crowded areas, with 34 of the victims "killed far away from the Israeli-imposed yellow line."
Israel kills family of six, including four children
Gaza's civil defense agency and witnesses said Israeli strikes killed 12 people, including a family of six, in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday.
One airstrike hit a house belonging to the al-Masri family in central Gaza City in the north, according to the territory's civil defense agency.
Witnesses said six members of the family were killed, including four children. Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital said it had received the bodies and the wounded.
At the site, AFP journalists observed extensive damage to the charred multi-storey house, whose roof had almost completely collapsed.
Relatives gathered at the hospital. Some wept as the body of a girl was placed in a white plastic bag and laid alongside the other bodies wrapped in thick blankets.
The "attack took us by surprise," said Ahmed al-Masri, who identified himself to AFP as a survivor of the strike.
"I could hear the children crying out for help, yet I was unable to save them," he added.
"My brother's entire family was wiped from the civil registry: him, his wife and their four children."
He said he had helped his children escape through a window, while flames devoured the building.
Another witness, Youssef al-Masri, said the strike took place around 2 a.m.
"While we were asleep, we heard the sound of a massive explosion and found that the house had been shelled, destroyed and engulfed in flames," he said.
The civil defense agency said six other people were killed on Tuesday in another Israeli strike in Gaza.
In attacks on July 17 and 18, for instance, Kheetan said the U.N. rights office had determined that 10 Israeli attacks on Gaza City, middle Gaza, north Gaza, and Khan Younis had killed at least 21 Palestinians.
"In one of these attacks, on an apartment in Gaza City, five members of one family, were killed together: both parents and three siblings, reportedly aged eight, 15, and 17," he said.
Kheetan stressed that "the killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza."
War crimes
"Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime," said Kheetan.
The spokesman also warned that Israel's constant moving of the "yellow line" westwards had left the Palestinian population in Gaza "trapped in an ever-shrinking area."
This, he stressed, presents "a continuous threat to life as the Israeli military appears to routinely fire on Palestinians for mere presence in the vicinity of that line, in violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law."
Israel has killed more than 1,100 Palestinians in Gaza since the truce took effect in October, according to Gaza's health ministry.
The U.N. rights office has so far verified the killing of 685 Palestinians between last October and April, Kheetan said.
Israel continues to block or limit international media from accessing Gaza.
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