NEWBORN twins were reportedly killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza while their father was registering their birth.

Father Mohammed Abu al-Qumsan went to the local government office to collect birth certificates for Asser, a boy, and Ayssel, a girl, when he received a call from his neighbours.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I am told it was a shell that hit the house.”

"I didn't even have the time to celebrate them," he said.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said 115 newborns have been killed in the territory since the war began.

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The military says it tries to avoid harming Palestinian civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense residential areas, sometimes sheltering in and launching attacks from homes, schools, mosques and other civilian buildings.

But the army rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war.

Israel’s offensive has left thousands of orphans — so many that local doctors employ an acronym when registering them: WCNSF, or “wounded child, no surviving family.”

The United Nations estimated in February that some 17,000 children in Gaza are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The Abu Hayyah family was sheltering in an area that Israel had ordered people to evacuate in recent days.

Many families have ignored the evacuation orders because they say nowhere feels safe, or because they are unable to make the arduous journey on foot, or because they fear they will never be able to return to their homes, even after the war.

Abuel-Qomasan and his wife had heeded orders to evacuate Gaza City in the opening weeks of the war.

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They sought shelter in central Gaza, as the army had instructed.

Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday also killed at least 17 people, including five children and their parents, Palestinian health officials say.

One strike hit a family home late on Tuesday in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation.

It killed five children, ranging in age from two to 11, and their parents, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

An Associated Press reporter who saw the bodies arrive said they had been dismembered by the blast and that the two-year-old had been decapitated.

In the nearby Maghazi refugee camp, a strike on a home early on Wednesday killed four people and wounded others, the hospital said.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, the health ministry’s emergency service said they recovered the bodies of four men who were killed in a strike on a residential tower late on Tuesday.

Two more people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, according to the emergency service. The strike also wounded five people.

The latest strikes came on the eve of new talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the 10-month-long war.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt are hoping to broker an agreement, but the sides remain far apart on several issues even after months of indirect negotiations.

Responding to reports of the incident with the newborn babies, an IDF spokesperson said: "The details of the incident as published are not currently known to the IDF.

"The IDF is fighting against the murderous terrorist organisation, Hamas, in Gaza following the massacre on October 7. Unlike the terrorist organisation, Hamas, the IDF solely targets military objectives and employs various measures to minimise harm to civilians."