At least 296 Palestinian children and adolescents have been killed since Israel launched its current offensive on July 8.
The UN children’s agency Unicef came up with the casualties, reports Gulf News.
“Children make up for 30% of the civilian casualties,” said Unicef.
“The number of child casualties during the last 48 hours may rise as a number of incidents are pending verification,” it said in a statement.
Unicef stressed that its figures are “cross-checked to the best extent possible in the current situation... subject to change based on further verifications.”
“Between 8 July and 2 August 2014, at least 296 Palestinian children were reported killed as a result of airstrikes and shelling by Israel aerial, naval and ground forces,” it said.
The toll breaks down to 187 boys and 109 girls, with at least 203 of them under the age of 12.
The new wave of violence raised the Palestinian death toll to 1669.
Israel carried out fresh attacks on southern Gaza Strip amidst a hunt for one of its missing soldiers believed to be captured by Hamas, the report said.
Israel also threw cold water over efforts to reach a solution to the crisis when it announced that it would not attend Egyptian-hosted negotiations for a new truce.
A Palestinian delegation was to fly to Cairo for negotiations, which would include Hamas’s demand that Egypt ease movement across its border with blockaded Gaza. However, Israel said it would not send its envoys as scheduled.
Several ceasefires between Israel and Hamas had failed to take hold or quickly collapsed, most recently on Friday after two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third went missing in an ambush.
In a statement Saturday, the military wing of Hamas said it had no knowledge of Goldin’s whereabouts and suggested that he may have been killed by the Israeli airstrikes that followed the apparent abduction.
“We have lost contact with the group of fighters that took part in the ambush and we believe they were all killed in the [Israeli] bombardment,” the statement said.
“Assuming that they managed to seize the soldier during combat, we assess that he was also killed in the incident.”
A senior Israeli official acknowledged it was possible that Goldin had been killed but said Israel had seen “nothing conclusive.”
Israel accused Hamas of seizing Hadar Goldin. However, Hamas said it believed its gunmen had struck before Friday’s ceasefire began and that if they captured Goldin, he probably died with his captors in heavy Israeli barrages that followed.
Israel also gave Palestinians who had fled the fighting in the northern town of Beit Lahiya the all-clear to return.
However, fear-gripped Palestinians did not budge as Israeli armoured columns could still be seen on the town’s periphery.
