The Guardian view on the children of Gaza: when 17,000 die, it’s more than a mistake

July16, 2025

Editorial/The Guardian

On Sunday, an Israeli strike killed six Palestinian children – and four adults – as they queued for water in a refugee camp. The deaths of children may be the most terrible part of any war. It is not only the suffering of the innocent and powerless, and the unimaginable pain of surviving parents – as dreadful as those are – but the knowledge of lives ended when they had barely begun, of futures that should have stretched long into the distance severed in an instant.

A Palestinian boy mourns over the body of his friend who was killed as he queued for water in a refugee camp on Sunday.  Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP