Israeli ‘double-tap’ air strike responsible for killing schoolboy in Gaza

An Israeli “double-tap” air strike killed two people, including a 15-year-old boy, in Gaza City on Tuesday, despite the US-brokered “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas in October last year.

An Israeli drone targeted a group of Palestinians in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, north of Gaza City. Israeli forces claimed they were targeting Hamas operatives.

A “double-tap” strike maximises casualties by bombing a location once, waiting for other people to arrive at the scene to render assistance, and then bombing it again.

The initial attack on Tuesday injured Palestinian Civil Defence paramedic Sharif Shadi Labad, who lay struggling for his life on the ground amidst buildings that had been destroyed.

Footage posted by Palestinian accounts and verified by Al Jazeera then showed a group of Palestinians running to rescue Labad when another drone flying overhead targeted the same place where Labad lay. The weapon is believed to have been a Mikholit, an Israeli-developed guided glide bomb.

The second attack killed 15-year-old schoolboy Mohammad Abdul Zinati, one of the group of people who tried to assist the paramedic, and wounded a number of others, according to Palestinian outlet Shehab News. The boy’s father later said he was returning home from school when the attack took place.

Video showed the body of Zinati on the ground covered in a white shroud outside al-Shifa Hospital after the attack, as his father bid him an emotional farewell, saying in Arabic: “God is sufficient for me, and he is the best disposer of affairs” and reciting the Quran.

In footage verified by Al Jazeera, locals and Civil Defence members held a photo of Labad during a funeral procession that featured his body covered in a white shroud on a gurney, chanting: “Oh martyr, rest, rest. We continue the struggle.”