KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories: Gazan mother Amal Abu Shalouf ran her hand over her son’s face and hair, a brief farewell before a man abruptly sealed the body bag carrying the three-year-old who was killed just hours earlier on Tuesday.
“Amir, my love, my dear!” cried his mother, struggling to cross the crowded courtyard of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, where several bodies lay in white plastic shrouds.
According to the civil defense agency, at least nine people were killed on Tuesday in the southern Gaza Strip as Israeli forces carried out military operations, more than 20 months into the war triggered by Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel.
Contacted by AFP, the military did not respond to a request for comment about Amir Abu Shalouf’s death.
At the hospital, a man carried the boy’s body in his arms through a crowd of dozens of mourners.
“I swear, I can’t take it,” his teenage brother, Ahmad Abu Shalouf, said, his face covered in tears.
“What wrong did he do?” said another brother, Mohammad Abu Shalouf. “An innocent little boy, sitting inside his tent, and a bullet struck him in the back.”
Mohammad said he had “found him shot in the back” as he returned to the tent that has become the family’s home in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area near Khan Yunis that is now a massive encampment for displaced Palestinians.
The devastating war has created dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza, where the United Nations has warned that the entire population is at risk of famine.
The grieving mother, comforted by relatives, said her young son had been begging for food in recent days and dreaming of a piece of meat.
“There is no food, no water, no clothing,” said Amal, who has eight children to take care of.
Amal said she too was injured in the pre-dawn incident that killed her son.
“I heard something fall next to my foot while I was sitting and baking, and suddenly felt something hit me. I started screaming,” she said.
Outside the tent at the time, she said she tried crawling and reaching for other family members.
“Then I heard my daughter screaming from inside the tent...  found them holding my son, his abdomen and back covered in blood.”
A group of men formed lines to recite a prayer for the dead, their words almost drowned out by the noise of Israeli drones flying overhead.
In the second row, Ahmad Abu Shalouf held his hands over his stomach in prayer, unable to hold back a stream of tears.
Similar scenes played out at the hospital courtyard again and again over several hours, as the day’s dead were mourned.
At one point, an emaciated man collapsed in front of the shrouded bodies.
One mourner pressed his head against one of the bodies, carried on a stretcher at the start of a funeral procession, before being helped up by others.
At a distance, a group of women supported Umm Mohammad Shahwan, a grieving mother, with all of them in tears.
“We need the war to end,” said Amal Abu Shalouf.
In Gaza, she lamented, “there’s no hope or peace.”

MADRID: Spain could receive as many as 100 million tourists this year, according to some projections, which the country’s economy minister said poses challenges for the country’s residents that the government can no longer afford to ignore.
Last year, Spain received a record 94 million international visitors, making it one of the most visited countries in the world.
“It’s important to understand that these record numbers in terms of tourism also pose challenges,” Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press. “And we need to deal with those challenges also for our own population.”
Tourism is a key sector for the Southern European nation’s economy, which grew faster than any major advanced economy last year at 3.2 percent, and is projected to grow at 2.4 percent this year, according to the Bank of Spain, well ahead of the expected eurozone average of 0.9 percent.
But a stubborn housing crisis in which home and rental costs have skyrocketed in cities such as Madrid, Barcelona and elsewhere has led to growing frustration about one aspect tied to tourism in particular: the proliferation of short-term rental apartments in city centers.
The country has seen several large protests that have drawn tens of thousands of people to demand more government action on housing. Signs at demonstrations with slogans such as “Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods” point to the growing anger.
In response, the government recently announced it was cracking down on Airbnb listings that it said were operating in the country illegally, a decision that the company is appealing.
“We are a 49 million-inhabitants country,” Cuerpo said. The record numbers of tourists illustrate the “attractiveness of our country, but also of the challenge that we have in terms of dealing and providing for a good experience for tourists, but at the same time avoiding overcharging  our own services and our own housing,” he said.
The Bank of Spain recently said the country has a deficit of 450,000 homes. Building more public housing is critical to solve the problem, Cuerpo said. Spain has a lower stock of public housing than many other major European Union countries.
“This is the key challenge for this term,” the minister said of the country’s housing woes.
On the possibility of more US tariffs on EU goods, the top economic policymaker for the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy said he believed the EU still wanted to reinforce economic ties with the US
“From the EU side, we are constructive but we are not naive,” Cuerpo said, adding that the bloc would pursue “other routes protecting our firms and industries” if no agreement with the Trump administration can be reached.
A 90-day pause on tariffs announced by the EU and the US is slated to end on July 14. About halfway through that grace period, US President Donald Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on steel imports. The US has also enacted a 25 percent tariff on vehicles and 10 percent so-called reciprocal tariffs on most other goods.
On how Spain’s current housing woes got here, the minister said a steep drop in construction in Spain following the 2008 financial crisis played a role. So did population growth due to immigration, Cuerpo said, and pressures from an increase in the number of tourists.
While building more housing is key, the minister advocated for an all-of-the-above approach, including regulating Spain’s housing market and short-term rental platforms.
“For us, there’s no silver bullet,” he said.