GAZA/RAMALLAH, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Two Palestinian children were killed on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as tensions with Israel continue to escalate.
Palestinian medical sources told Xinhua that 12-year-old Youssef Asaliya was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. His body was transferred to Al-Shifa Hospital in western Gaza City.
Local sources and eyewitnesses also reported additional Israeli airstrikes east of the Gaza Strip, and the arrest of two Palestinian fishermen fishing off the coast.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the strike in a statement, stating that troops operating in the northern Gaza Strip "identified a terrorist who crossed the Yellow Line and approached the troops, posing an imminent threat to their safety."
The military said it "eliminated the terrorist in order to remove the threat."
Gaza-based health authorities said on Monday that Israel had killed 603 people and injured 1,618 others in the Gaza Strip since a ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, 2025, bringing the total death toll since the outbreak of the conflict on Oct. 7, 2023, to 72,063, with 171,726 others injured.
In the West Bank, Palestinian security sources reported that one child was killed and another seriously injured due to the explosion of previously unexploded ordnance left behind by the Israeli army in the central Jordan Valley.
The IDF confirmed soldiers were dispatched to the area following a report of three Palestinians injured while "playing with unexploded ordnance."
The violence coincided with renewed international criticism of Israeli settlement policy.
Referring to Israel's recent approval of a plan to register West Bank land as state property, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East Philippe Lazzarini on Tuesday warned that "accelerating the dispossession of Palestinians & expanding Israeli settlements will do nothing to bring long-needed stability & peace to the region."
He added that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on Israel to "reverse these measures", urging all parties to "preserve the only path to lasting peace, a negotiated two-State solution in line with international law."
Israel seized control of the West Bank after the 1967 war and has established settlements there, a move deemed illegal by the international community. ■
