The son of one of the Palestinian members of Tayseer al-Batsh’s family, who were killed in an Israeli air strike, mourns during their funeral in Gaza City.

By Ofira Koopmans and Saud Abu Ramadan/Gaza City/DPA

“All I’m concerned about now is how to protect my children from any haphazard airstrikes,” the 45-year-old said from his hospital bed, adding nowhere is safe in Gaza.

Al-Haddad was outside al-Haramain Mosque in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood when a nearby two-storey house inhabited by the al-Batsh family was struck by two missiles around 10:30pm as people emerged from the mosque.

Hamas’ police chief in Gaza, Tayseer al-Batsh, was among 15 people injured.

Seventeen members of his family were killed in the single deadliest incident yet in eight days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians. Nine men, three women (one of them pregnant) and five children, aged 17, 13, 12, 7 and 2, were killed.

“I want to ask (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin)  Netanyahu a question,” said al-Haddad. “Are children in your opinion also militants?”

Mohamed al-Batsh, 22, a cousin of Tayseer who lives across the street from the targeted house, says he was leaving the mosque when the two missiles struck “one after the other”.

Rescue teams spent more than 12 hours removing bodies and survivors from under the rubble, witnesses said.

“I don’t know what happened next and I found myself lying on a bed in Shiffa hospital,” Mohamed al-Batsh said.

“Of course Israel is to be blamed for this inhuman, vulgar, barbarian ... what else can I say ... awful crime that killed children, the youngest of whom is two years old.”

In eight days and nights of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, more than 190 Palestinians have been killed and 1,400 others injured.

According to a DPA count based on a list of names provided by Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra, 30% are women and children.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affair said based on Palestinian data about two-third of the men who had been killed were not militants.

Israel resumed a punishing air campaign against Gaza yesterday after Hamas rejected a six-hour truce and fired dozens of rockets over the border, killing a first Israeli. The renewed strikes killed two Gazans, raising the Palestinian death toll in eight days of violence to 194, medics said.

As part of its PR effort, Israel has published a recording in which an Israeli officer is heard telephoning a Palestinian family and warning them to evacuate because their house will be bombed.

But in the case of the al-Batsh house, no advance warning was given, said Mohamed al-Batsh.

 “I tell you (Netanyahu) one thing, these children are not terrorists,” al-Haddad said, “but because of what you do, they will become militants to take revenge when they grow up.”