Family mourns boy killed by Israeli strike as he searched for bread

Doaa Al-Asouri kisses her dead son’s blood-soaked head, tears streaming down her face.

“Forgive me, my love, for not feeding you,” Al-Asouri, 36, cries outside Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis. “I wanted to feed you.”

She strokes 10-year-old Ashraf Wafi’s hair Tuesday, the moment captured by NBC News’ crew on the ground in Gaza. Later, before the funeral, the child’s father, Mahmoud, kisses his son’s feet, the white shroud stained with bright-red blood.

Ashraf’s family told NBC News he had been on a mission to fetch bread from his aunt when an Israeli bomb killed the boy. Just a few hours earlier, Israel announced it would end a nearly three-month blockade and allow medicine and other vital supplies into the enclave after a blockade of nearly three months.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military’s Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the [Palestinian] Territories (COGAT) told NBC News that a total of 93 trucks carrying humanitarian aid had been allowed into the enclave via the southern Kerem Shalom crossing. A handful of trucks carrying baby food were allowed into the enclave Monday.

The United Nations and humanitarian groups said as of Tuesday night that that no aid had been distributed. NBC News teams on the ground have also seen no evidence of aid being distributed.

Claire Manera, an emergency coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, said Wednesday that aid groups were also being given strict “conditions on where the aid should go and how it should get there.”

“It’s not safe for us to deliver it that way and it’s not safe for people to receive it in the way Israeli authorities are insisting,” she said in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program.

Israeli forces have intensified their military assault on the Gaza Strip in recent days, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing Monday to take “full control” of the entire enclave.

The military launched its offensive after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials, marking a major escalation in a decadeslong conflict.

But Netanyahu and his government are facing mounting pressure at home and abroad over the deadly campaign in Gaza, where more than 53,400 people, including thousands of children, have been killed since the war began, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the BBC on Wednesday that he believed Israel’s actions in Gaza were “very close to a war crime,” an offense human rights group have accused Israel of committing throughout the war.

Last year, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes. Israel also continues to face allegations of genocide over its actions in Gaza in a case brought before the International Court of Justice.

Olmert’s comments came a day after Yair Golan, a left-wing opposition voice and the former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, accused his own country of killing “babies as a pastime.”

Further afield, Britain paused free trade talks with Israel, summoned its ambassador and announced further sanctions against West Bank settlers Tuesday after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was horrified by the military escalation in Gaza.

It came after the United Kingdom joined France and Canada in threatening to take “concrete actions” against Israel on Monday, calling the handful of aid trucks it allowed to enter the strip on the same day after an 11-week blockade “wholly inadequate.”

In a joint statement, the countries’ leaders said they would go so far as to impose “targeted sanctions” if dramatically more aid was not allowed to enter Gaza.