Video shows Israeli drone following, killing 4 Palestinian civilians in Khan Younis

GAZA CITY, Palestine                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

An Israeli military drone targeted and killed four Palestinian civilians with missiles in the Al-Sekka area in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera channel showed in a video aired on Thursday evening.

The scenes were captured from an Israeli drone in Khan Younis in February, showing the pursuit of the four Palestinian youth and their targeting with several missiles.

Two of them were killed with the first missile, then the third and fourth were killed with two more missiles.

The footage shows the youth searching for their homes or what remains of them among the rubble on a road cleared by the army’s vehicles before withdrawing from the area.

It is clear from the footage that the four civilians did not carry weapons and did not pose any threat.

After two youths were killed in the first hit, the third boy was seen moving away from the targeted site. But the drone followed and bombed him.

On Thursday evening, the Gaza Media Office considered the killing of 4 civilians in the strip by an Israeli drone as evidence of a “deep crisis within the Israeli occupation.”

“We strongly condemn this crime in which the occupation army bombed 4 civilian youths with drones, killing them vindictively and turning them into scattered remains, indicating the magnitude of the deep crisis that this occupation is going through by killing in this monstrous manner,” the media office said.

“The US administration, the international community, and the Israeli occupation bear full responsibility for the continuation of these crimes against Palestinian civilians for the sixth consecutive month (of the war),” it added.

It also held “the countries that supply the occupation with various weapons responsible for the crimes of murder against civilians, children, and women.”

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed.

Nearly 32,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and nearly 74,200 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war, now in its 167th day, has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in January issued an interim ruling ordering Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala in Istanbul