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"UPDATE, July 16, 2014, 3 p.m. ET: The Israel Defense Forces have launched an initial investigation into the incident, according to Israeli news source Haaretz, which cites senior IDF officials as saying that initial findings show the children were killed by an air strike meant for Hamas militants. IDF is investigating the possibility that there was misinformation or that the strikes missed their target.\n\nFour children were killed by Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday that hit in close proximity to al-Deira Hotel, a Gaza City hotel full of foreign journalists.\nThe attack, NBC News reported, came at around 4 p.m. local time and appeared to be the result of a naval shell.\nAt least two additional children were injured, according to local reports.\nTheir names, according to the journalist Dalia Hatuqa, who cites the Palestinian health ministry: Ahed Bakr, 10, Zakaria Bakr, 10, Mohd Bakr, 11, and Ismail Bakr, 9.\n\nThree shells hit fishermen's beach just next to hotels. At least 2 children wounded and their father. pic.twitter.com/aDpzFoij4y\n\u2014 Jonathan Miller (@millerC4) July 16, 2014\n\nThey were all from the same extended family, according to reports.\n\nChildren wounded by shrapnel treated by foreign journalists on terrace of al-Deira hotel #Gaza pic.twitter.com/G8jQBXmZHZ\n\u2014 Jonathan Miller (@millerC4) July 16, 2014\n\nThe journalists, both local freelancers and international correspondents with NBC News, the Wall Street Journal, AFP and more, tweeted about the airstrike in the moments after it hit \u2014 some of them reported hearing two explosions before running to the scene of the blasts.\n\n2 loud bangs near our hotel, 2 children and their father injured whilst on the beach in front of the al-deira hotel. #Gaza #c4news\n\u2014 Anna-Lisa Fuglesang (@C4annalisa) July 16, 2014\n\nA handful of the journalists assisted in administering first aid in the lobby of the hotel before the more gravely injured children were taken to a local hospital. \n\njournalists carry wounded children out of al-Deira hotel pic.twitter.com/hbwKCkCXIe\n\u2014 Jonathan Miller (@millerC4) July 16, 2014\n\nThe Guardian\u2019s Peter Beaumont called it a \u201Cpersonal low point \u2014 giving first aid with colleagues to two children wounded by shrapnel on Gaza beach.\u201D\n\nToday was a personal low point - giving first aid with colleagues to two children wounded by shrapnel on Gaza beach on terrace of our hotel\n\u2014 peter beaumont (@petersbeaumont) July 16, 2014\n\nHe described his role giving aid to the children in a dispatch to The Guardian:\n\nBy the south wall we heard a very loud explosion, and thinking it was either some kind of naval gunfire or more artillery, where you see fisherman and their children often getting their stuff ready. \nWe see this billowing brown smoke and very, very quickly we realize there are people running through the smoke. We didn't know then that four of the children \u2013 they're all part of a family called the al-Baqqa family \u2013 they came running down. And as I'm standing looking down on this wall, kind of a little place that people go down on weekends.\nWhile I'm standing down looking toward this wall \u2026 there's an adult and three children were turning the corner at the beach waving at us, kind of trying to say \"Can we come to the beach, will you help us?\" \u2013 they got hit by a second artillery round. By the time they made it, the adult, a man of about thirty, clearly had a stump \u2026 from shrapnel.\nThe three boys got brought up to the terrace where we work and fortunately we had some medical kits, and we very quickly went to work on the two kids who'd been injured. A child brought in, about eight I guess, eight or nine, got a shrapnel wound to the chest, as the other'd been injured in the arm and the head, and we gave first aid while the ambulances came.\nWe were worried at first that the hole in his chest might spill through into his lung. We wanted to stop the bleeding but also to try and make sure he was all right until the ambulance came. So some other colleagues helped his brother or cousin I guess, with the head injury.\n\nOthers in the hotel took video as the children arrived \u2014 at least one journalist can be seen holding an iPhone inches from the face of an injured child.\n\nPost by Bashar Taleb.\n\u201CFour children killed in an #Israel strike metres from our #Gaza hotel, we patched up two who ran from the beach up to us. Others hurt,\u201D tweeted AFP\u2019s Sara Hussein.\n\nFour children killed in an #Israel strike metres from our #Gaza hotel, we patched up two who ran from the beach up to us. Others hurt.\n\u2014 Sara Hussein (@sarahussein) July 16, 2014\n\n\u201CA pretty grisly attack in front of my hotel at a hut near the harbor. We ran out to find two young men and a small boy in the rubble,\u201D tweeted the Wall Street Journal\u2019s Nick Casey.\n\nA pretty grisly attack in front of my hotel at a hut near the harbor. We ran out to find two young men and a small boy in the rubble. #Gaza\n\u2014 Nick Casey (@caseysjournal) July 16, 2014\n\n\u201CJust saw badly mangled body of young boy pulled from a smouldering shipping container hit by #Israel strike in front of our hotel,\u201D added ABC News\u2019s Alexander Marquardt.\n\nJust saw badly mangled body of young boy pulled from a smouldering shipping container hit by #Israel strike in front of our hotel. #Gaza\n\u2014 Alexander Marquardt (@MarquardtA) July 16, 2014\n\nHe shared a photo (warning: it\u2019s graphic) of a young boy who was \u201Cpulled from the flames and did not look alive.\u201D\nThe beach, where the children had been playing only moments before, is under normal circumstances a popular spot for families and children and even surfers \u2014 an escape  from the dusty and crowded refugee camps in the strip.\nA video posted on YouTube shows emergency workers responding to the attack on the beach. (Warning: some parts of the video are graphic.) \n\nMinutes before they were killed in the airstrike, the children were playing on the beach. As NBC News\u2019s Ayman Mohyeldin tweeted, \u201CI was kicking a ball with them.\u201D\n\n4 Palestinian kids killed in a single Israeli airstrike. Minutes before they were killed by our hotel, I was kicking a ball with them #gaza\n\u2014 Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) July 16, 2014\n\nHe later posted this Instagram photo, showing a Palestinian mother reacting to the news that her son was one of those killed.\n\nChannel 4 Foreign Affairs correspondent Jonathan Miller, meanwhile, tweeted a picture from the Abu Hassira Mosque.\n\n4 children killed by Israeli shell on #Gaza beach lie in the Abu Hassira Mosque. Imam distressed. Much anger #c4news pic.twitter.com/ZdcxKPocTL\n\u2014 Jonathan Miller (@millerC4) July 16, 2014\n\nReportedly, the four boys were cousins and came from a family of fishermen. \nAfter a brief cease-fire, Israel has resumed its massive bombing campaign of Gaza. Palestinian officials say 213 people have died and 1,565 have been injured.\nAccording to the UN, as many as 80 percent of those killed in Gaza are civilians.\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#appId=116628718381794&amp;xfbml=1&amp;status=1&amp;cookie=1\",\"facebook_jssdk\");_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/07/16/israeli-strike-kills-4-children-hotel-journalists/>