The final farewell: Taken to his mother's bedside to say goodbye, the three-year-old boy killed in an Israeli air strike as she lay in hospital wounded from attack

Father brought three-year-old Kamal al-Bakri to hospital after he was pulled from rubble

His mother Dua was too badly injured from the air strike to attend boy's funeral today



Kamal died with two other family members when missiles struck their home at the Shati refugee camp



More than 400 children have been killed in Israel's assault on Gaza, according to leading UNICEF official


Lying in a hospital bed with despair etched across her face, a mother cradles her dead son in a final, heartbreaking farewell after he was killed by an Israeli air strike.



Three-year-old Kamal al-Bakri was brought to see his mother, Dua, after his tiny body was pulled from the rubble of their house in Gaza City.

He was carried to the hospital by his father, Mohammed, to share one last moment together.

Dua was apparently too badly injured from the same attack to attend the toddler's funeral.



Heart-wrenching: Mohammed al-Bakri brings the body of his three-year-old son Kamal to the boy's wounded mother, Dua, at the Shifa hospital in Gaza City after he was killed in an Israeli missile strike Final farewell: Kamal was killed along with two other family members in an Israeli missile strike on their home

Kamal was killed along with two other family members when missiles struck their home at the Shati refugee camp yesterday.

The attack, which also wounded around 30 other Gazans, is believed to have taken place shortly after a ceasefire had begun at 10am (8am BST).

Israel's military responded by saying said it had targeted an 'operative threat'.

More than 400 children have been killed in Israel's assault on Gaza, and almost a thousand times as many are traumatised and face an 'extraordinarily bleak' future, a ccording to leading UNICEF official Pernille Ironside.

Ms Ironside, the head of the field office run by the U.N. children's agency in Gaza, said today that rebuilding children's lives would be part of a much larger effort to reconstruct the Palestinian enclave once the fighting has stopped for good.

'How do we expect parents and caregivers to care for their children and to raise them in a positive and nurturing way when they themselves are barely functioning as humans? People have lost entire strands of their family in one blow,' she said by phone, addressing a U.N news conference in Geneva .

'How can a society cope with this? This is a deep, deep, deep wound.'

Grieving: Members of the al-Bakri family kiss three-year-old Kamal during his funeral in Gaza City Grief and anger: A Palestinian relative carries the body of four-month-old Asma al Bakri, who was also killed in the air strike, during her funeral in Gaza City

As of yesterday, 408 Palestinian children were reported to have been killed, 31 percent of all civilian casualties. More than 70 percent of the 251 boys and 157 girls killed were 12 or younger.



UNICEF estimates about 373,000 children have had some kind of direct traumatic experience and require immediate psycho-social support, she said.

'It is an extraordinary thing to live through, and especially to survive and witness the use of incredibly damaging weapons that tend to slice people with terrible amputations and maimings, shredding people apart in front of children's eyes and in front of their parents as well,' Ms Ironside said.

Gaza officials say the war has killed 1,867 Palestinians, most of them civilians. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians have been killed since fighting began on July 8, after a surge in Palestinian rocket launches.



Kamal's funeral was held as thousands of d isplaced Gazans returned to the ruins of their homes after the latest ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect today.

Carrying mattresses and with children in tow, families left UN shelters for neighbourhoods where whole blocks have been destroyed by Israeli shelling.

As they picked through the rubble to find what possessions were left, the smell of decomposing bodies filled the air.

Sitting on a pile of debris in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, Zuhair Hjaila, a 33-year-old father of four, said he had lost his house and his supermarket.

'This is complete destruction,' he said. 'I never thought I would come back to find an earthquake zone.'



Frantic: Palestinians search the rubble for missing family members after the air strike on the al-Bakri house Grim task: Palestinians inspect the rubble of the destroyed house of the al-Bakri family after the missile strike

Lives in ruins: A Palestinian family carry their belongings towards the remains of their destroyed home after returning to the town of Beit Hanoun during a ceasefire Destruction: Palestinian children try to salvage belongings from the rubble of houses which have been razed to the ground in the Al-Shejaea neighbourhood of Gaza City Blitzed: Palestinians look at destroyed houses after returning to the Shejaia neighbourhood, which witnesses said was heavily hit by Israeli shelling and air strikes With the damaged minaret of the Al-Azba mosque in the background, a Palestinian smokes a cigarette as he sits on damages of the Nada Towers at a residential neighborhood, in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip Palestinians inspect the damage of the Nada Towers at a residential neighbourhood in the town of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. The damaged minaret of the Al-Azba mosque can be seen in the background Ramadan Subuh, one of 2,500 Palestinians who have been sheltering inside a packed school building for safety, explained how civilians have struggled to survive nearly four weeks of Israeli bombardment. 'A life of humiliation - this how we live,' said Mr Subuh, 42, whose family of 12 fled to the U.N.-run Al-Fakhoura school from Beit Lahiya, a town in the northern Gaza Strip devastated by the fighting. 'We are terrified. We know it not safe at all. No place in Gaza is safe, and everyone is taking his own chance,' he said. Some 260,000 of the Gaza Strip's population of 1.8 million have taken refuge in schools and other institutions run by the United Nations. Many are staying put for now, waiting to see if a 72-hour ceasefire that unexpectedly began today holds. At al-Fakhoura, as many as 50 people have crammed into each classroom, as families use blankets to screen off their cramped quarters from others.

Women use plastic buckets to bathe their children and wash dishes, and while there are 12 bathrooms in the school, there is no running water in them. 'You have to wait 30 to 60 minutes to get into the bathroom. You have to wait your turn to drink and ... to get your lousy meal,' said Mr Subuh, a former farmhand who used to work in Israel before Hamas Islamists seized power in Gaza in 2007. He added: 'Every day they tell us: "Wait until tomorrow and things will get better". But tomorrow never comes. We hope the war ends and we can go back to live in our houses.' A Palestinian boy inspects rubble of their destroyed houses in Khoza-a neighbourhood in the east of Khanyounis town in the southern Gaza Strip Nothing left: Ahmad Abu Daga, stands in the bedroom of his destroyed house, after it was hit by an Israeli strike in Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis A Palestinian salvages what he can of his belongings from the rubble of his destroyed house hit by an Israeli strike in Khoza-a Palestinians rifle through the rubble as they attempt to salvage their belongings from their destroyed home in Rafah Despair: Palestinians sit on the remains of their homes after returning to Beit Hanoun town, which witnesses said was heavily hit by Israeli shelling in a conflict that has killed 1,834 Gazans Bleak: A Palestinian man sits on a sofa holding a child amid destroyed buildings in the Al-Shejaea neighbourhood of Gaza City after a 72-hour ceasefire was declared Children make their way though the rubble. Israel has withdrawn all its troops from Gaza after completing a mission to destroy a network of tunnels built by Hamas Searching for what used to be their home: Palestinian men ride a donkey cart past ruined buildings in the northern Gaza Strip Macabre recovery: Rescue workers remove the body a Palestinian man from under the rubble following an earlier Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip OBAMA GIVES ISRAEL AN EXTRA £130MILLION FOR IRON DOME MISSILE DEFENCE SYSTEM President Barack Obama has signed a bill granting an additional $225million (£133 million) for Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system. The defence system has been highly effective in the current round of violence between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. It allows Israel's military to shoot down incoming rockets or mortars headed toward major population centres in Israel. Israeli officials say it has a success rate as high as 90 per cent. The U.S. has provided hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars for Iron Dome in the past. The new package is intended to replenish Israel's capabilities.

Congress approved the money last week before politicians left for their annual summer break.

Mr Obama signed the bill in the Oval Office with a handful of photographers present. Al-Fakhoura was bombed in the three-week Gaza war in 2009, but was spared this time. Six other schools, however, have been shelled in the current conflict, and at least 30 people sheltering in them have been killed, and dozens wounded. Seven miles north of the school, across the Israeli border, three families have spent the past month living in a public shelter in Ashkelon, a town that has been a frequent target of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip.

Their older neighbourhood does not have the reinforced 'safe rooms' that by law must be built into new apartments, so they sought the refuge of an underground public shelter. At its entrance, a plastic cup filled with cigarette butts stands on a round table. Inside, mattresses are strewn across the floor where people, five children among them, lie fast asleep. A widescreen television on the wall informs them of the latest developments. Bags of food, baby formula, clothes and toys are scattered along the walls, which are covered with children's paintings and the names of past Israeli offensives in the Gaza Strip, scrawled in different colours. Shir Elkayam, 22, has been living in the shelter with her partner and baby daughter. 'It's been rough. It can drive you crazy. Kids can't be cooped up inside 24 hours a day for a month,' she said. 'During the lulls in the fighting, we let ourselves take them out for a bit to a movie or some other place that was safe.' Ms Elkayam said she and her loved ones were not going home yet, despite the Egyptian-brokered truce. 'We are waiting to see if the situation does calm down before we move out of the shelter,' she said. 'It's scary. Every siren is scary, every blast is scary.' The shelter has two toilets but no shower. Like the Palestinians in the Gaza school, the Israelis in the Ashkelon shelter use plastic tubs to wash up. 'Whenever there was a lull, I would run upstairs to do the laundry,' Ms Elkayam said. 'I don't believe this truce. Otherwise, I would have been upstairs long ago.' Relatives have brought down food once a day, and a refrigerator was recently put in. 'It has been tense, we are very nervous. We spent a lot of time just watching the news,' she added. The 72-hour truce, which started at 8am local time (6am BST), was agreed by both sides in the month-long conflict which has seen hundreds killed.

Painful road back home: Displaced Palestinians leave a UN school in Beit Lahia to return to their houses after a 72-hour ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect

Closed up: Palestinian men look at what used to be a tunnel leading from the Gaza Strip into Israel, in the area of Rafah

Lieutenant-Colonel Lerner said the army overnight destroyed the last of 32 tunnels located inside Gaza and which had been dug by Hamas for cross-border attacks at an estimated cost of £60million.

'Today we completed the removal of this threat,' he said.

Israeli officials say, however, that some tunnels may have gone undetected and that the armed forces are poised to strike at these in the future.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, commended the IDF and Shin Bet on taking out all the tunnels.

'This was a complex operation that made heroes of soldiers under difficult combat conditions,' he said in a written statement. 'As I said at the beginning of the offensive, there is no 100 per cent guarantee for success but we did all we could to achieve our goal.



Mr Netanyahu also wants to disarm Hamas and demilitarise Gaza, stripping of their arsenals guerrillas who launched more than 3,300 rockets and mortar bombs at Israel this past month. Hamas has ruled that out.

'For Israel the most important issue is the issue of demilitarisation. We must prevent Hamas from rearming, we must demilitarise the Gaza Strip,' Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev told Reuters television.

It comes amid reports that a British aid worker was killed on Sunday during an Israeli strike in Rafah while he was delivering supplies to a hospital. The Foreign Office has said it is investigating.

BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE MINISTER RESIGNS IN PROTEST AGAINST GOVERNMENT'S GAZA POLICY Baroness Warsi, the Foreign Office minister, has dramatically resigned in protest at the Government's policy on Gaza. The first Muslim woman to serve in the Cabinet posted a message on Twitter announcing she 'can no longer support Govt policy on #Gaza'. The loss of the former Tory party chairman will put pressure on David Cameron, who has refused to say whether Israel's actions in Gaza are 'criminal'. In a statement posted on her Twitter feed, she said: 'With deep regret I have this morning written to the Prime Minister & tendered my resignation. I can no longer support Govt policy on Gaza.' Baroness Warsi was the senior minister of state at the Foreign Office and faith minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government.

There were no further details given about the reason for her decision to resign, or the timing.



