3 Palestinian teens killed in Israeli strike buried in Gaza

Hundreds of Palestinians lay to rest three teenage boys killed in an Israeli airstrike, with their families insisting they had no militant ties, as mourners called on Gaza’s militant groups to retaliate.

The IDF said the trio had be attempting to sabotage the border fence when targeted.

The deaths a day earlier of the teens — ages 13 to 15 — threaten to plunge the area into further violence after a brief exchange of fire over the weekend. The Israeli army struck 80 targets in Gaza in response to the heaviest rocket salvos from the Hamas-ruled territory in months.

The boys’ bodies were wrapped in Palestinian flags and carried by mourners who shot in the air as they chanted “God is great.”

Aisha Abu Daher says her 13-year-old son Abdel-Hamid had “nothing to do with resistance,” referring to the militant factions. Abdel-Hamid and his friends drank tea in the afternoon and rode a donkey cart, a daily habit, and did not come home, she said.

“I went to a wedding, and in the evening I worried when he did not return,” she said over the phone from her home in the central Gaza Strip, about one kilometer (a half mile) away from the border area. “I don’t know why they went or what they were doing there, but I’m sure they were not doing anything bad.”

The three boys all lived in Wadi al-Salaqa, a farming village in central Gaza near the Israeli border.

— AP