PLO calls on ICC to immediately investigate Gaza child killings

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) on Monday called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch an investigation into an Israeli airstrike that killed three children in Gaza.

“The international community and its institutions must break their silence towards the incessant crimes committed by the occupation army,” the PLO said in a statement.

Three Palestinian children were killed on Sunday by an Israeli air strike near the eastern border of Gaza, according to the blockaded enclave's health ministry.

"The ambulance crews transported bodies of three children aged between 12 and 14 from the site of the Israeli air strike in the eastern region of southern Gaza," ministry spokesman Ashraf al Qidra said in a statement.

The children were transferred to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah in central Gaza, Al Qidra added.

The Israeli army claimed that "the children were trying to tamper with the security fence and apparently planted an explosive device".

The PLO accused the Israeli army of “deliberately killing” the three children.

“The ICC is requested to launch an immediate investigation into this crime,” it added.

In late December, 2014, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome convention and appendixes related t o the ICC, which accepted the Palestinian request to become one of its members in April 2015.

For the last seven months, Palestinians in Gaza have been staging regular demonstrations along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone to demand the right to return to their homes in historical Palestine from which they were driven in 1948.

They also demand an end to Israel’s 12-year blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has gutted the coastal enclave’s economy and deprived its two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.