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The final moments of 4 boys killed by Israeli rockets

They could be children frolicking on the shore in the summer sun — but these heartbreaking photos show four Palestinian boys running for their lives near the blue waters off a Gaza beach.

The cousins’ lives were cut short when shells fired by an Israeli naval gunboat killed them on Wednesday.

“The kids were playing on the beach. They were all … under the age of 15,” Ahmed Abu Hassera told Reuters after witnessing the tragic incident. “When the first shell hit land, they ran away but another shell hit them all.”

Mourners carry the bodies of the four Palestinian children killed during a bombardment of a coastal area of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.Reuters

Parents of the four boys — Ahed Atef Bakr, 10, Zakaria Ahed Bakr, 10, Mohamed Ramez, 11, and Ismael Mohamed Bakr, 9 — were overcome with grief when they heard the news.

“He was my only son … he died with his cousins, they all died together,” Zakaria’s father told NBC News. “We live by the coast. There was a headline on the news that four children were injured … so we went looking for the kids and we could not find them, so we came here to the hospital to look for them and we found them all, including my son … oh my God.”

The Israeli military called the deaths “tragic” and said in a statement that the shelling was meant to strike Hamas terrorist operatives.

In the wake of the attack, Israel and Hamas agreed to a five-hour humanitarian ceasefire on Thursday at the request of the United Nations.

The brief break in 10 days of airstrikes and rocket blasts allowed cooped-up Gaza City residents an opportunity to do routine activities like food shopping and picking up their paychecks, Reuters reports.

But the lull didn’t last long. The Israeli military said three mortar bombs touched down in Israel during the relatively peaceful period, according to Reuters. Israeli forces countered the attack by firing mortar rounds into the Palestinian territory.

The ceasefire ended at 3 p.m. with a bang, as Palestinian militants fired a rocket at the coastal city of Ashkelon, the military said.

On Thursday, an Israeli official said Egypt has recommended a permanent ceasefire that would begin on Friday, but a spokesperson for Hamas denied that a truce is planned, Reuters reports.

More than 220 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed in the last 10 days of warfare.