Israeli airstrikes kill 11 children in Gaza being treated for trauma, aid agency says

World leaders are dialing up their pressure for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after news emerged that an Israeli airstrike killed 11 Gazan children being treated for trauma.

Concerns are growing over the worsening humanitarian situation, as the conflict raged for a 10th day Wednesday, pushing the Palestinian death toll to more than 220 people — including more than 60 children — and 12 people in Israel, including two children.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said Tuesday that 11 of the young victims in Gaza — between the ages of 5 and 15 — were participating in its trauma program before Israeli airstrikes killed them in their homes.

NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland expressed outrage at what he called a “maddening, crazy exchange of rockets and missiles,” and said both Israeli politicians and generals, as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza, should be held accountable.

“What they’re doing is killing children,” he told CNN’s Zain Asher.

Karl Schembri, NRC’s regional media adviser, told CNN Wednesday that the organization has dealt with children “who had absolutely terrifying, violent nightmares, that make them unable to function.”

“The violence, there’s no escape from it. This is not like going to some frontline, which you can avoid. This is the frontline coming to your bedroom,” Schembri said.

World leaders call for a truce

In a dramatic increase in pressure in its public messaging Wednesday, the White House said US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “that he expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire” in their fourth phone call over the past week.

Biden had earlier called for a cessation of hostilities in his conversations with Netanyahu, but reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself from militant rocket attacks. He had faced growing pressure to take a harder stance with the Israeli leader.

Netanyahu, however, said Wednesday that he was “determined to continue this operation until its objective is achieved: to restore quiet and security to you, citizens of Israel.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) earlier said strikes would likely continue for days to come.

“I especially appreciate the support of our friend US President Joe Biden, for the State of Israel’s right to self-defense,” he said.

France circulated a motion for a resolution for the UN Security Council to approve, providing momentum to spur an end to the turmoil. The Council, however, has been unable to approve a legally non-binding statement on the issue, blocked by the United States, which told the Council any UN action is not timely and won’t help de-escalate fighting.

“We are calling for a ceasefire, which is what we sent to the UN Security Council. There are very active discussions with the Americans on this subject in particular,” French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said at a news conference in Paris.

Egypt and Qatar’s efforts to broker a truce have stalled over two main points, a senior Hamas leader with direct knowledge of mediation efforts told CNN on Sunday.

Israel has conducted more than 1,800 air strikes on Gaza since violence erupted over a week ago, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Information. The ministry estimates that the Israeli air campaign has inflicted more than $323 million dollars of damage to the Palestinian enclave.

On Wednesday, dozens of Israeli warplanes launched a series of airstrikes on several Hamas targets, including “a weapons depot” located in offices belonging to Hamas’ internal security headquarters in Khan Yunis, and “a command and control center” in Rafah, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) said.

The 25-minute-long attack destroyed “about 40 underground targets,” the IAF said in a tweet, adding that about 3,750 rockets had been fired from Gaza as of Wednesday morning, of which 550 had failed and fallen within Gaza. It’s unclear how many of those rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system. The IDF has said previously that the system intercepts more than 90% of the rockets targeted.

The IDF has also twice tried to target the leader of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, over the past 10 days, a military source in Israel confirmed to CNN on Wednesday. On each occasion, he escaped, the source said. No details about the dates or location of the attempts to kill Deif were provided.

Deif leads the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and has been an influential planner of attacks for more than 20 years. He has long been an IDF target, suffering multiple injuries during previous attempts on his life, including the loss of both legs in 2006, according to Israeli media reports.

The official also gave the most detailed Israeli explanation yet of why it destroyed a building housing international media outlets Al Jazeera and the Associated Press, among others, over the weekend.

The official said the Al-Jala’a building contained the electronic department of the military wing of Hamas, which was researching and developing high-end capabilities for attacks on Israel. The Israeli military has not provided evidence of Hamas’s presence in the building, and CNN has not been able to verify the claim.

Demolishing the building, rather than a more targeted strike, has drawn intense criticism.

Reporters Without Borders, an NGO that works to protect journalists around the world, said it was calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate whether deliberately targeting media outlets constitutes a war crime.

But Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of “deliberately” operating near buildings like hospitals and schools, thereby endangering civilians who risk becoming human shields.

In Gaza, more than 72,000 people are considered internally displaced, many of them finding shelter in dozens of schools, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Four Palestinians, including a local journalist, were killed and 10 others wounded in overnight Israeli raids on Gaza Wednesday, according to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

The journalist, Yusef Abu Hussein, was a broadcaster with Gaza radio station Al Aqsa Radio. He was killed in an Israeli strike targeting a house near the Sheikh Radwan cemetery, north of Gaza City, the WAFA report said.

In another development, four rockets were launched from Lebanon into Israeli territory on Wednesday afternoon, the IDF said. Israel responded with artillery fire.

A high ranking Lebanese security source told CNN that the rockets were fired from the area of Seddiqine, in south Lebanon. The source did not say the extent of the damage caused by the Israeli artillery response, but added that the Lebanese Army and United Nations peacekeeping force intensified their patrols last week in the area in an effort to prevent further launches from Lebanon.