 "Israeli missile malfunction kills eight, including six children")
At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen others wounded in central Gaza on Sunday, in what the Israeli military said was a missile strike that missed its intended target due to a malfunction.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it had been aiming at an Islamic Jihad militant in the area when the missile fell “dozens of metres from the target.”
“The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians,” the military said in a statement, adding that the incident was under review.
According to Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital, the strike hit a water distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing six children and injuring 17 others.
Fuel shortages in Gaza have led to the closure of desalination and sanitation facilities in recent weeks, worsening the enclave’s water crisis and making residents dependent on collection centres for basic supplies.
In a separate attack on Sunday, Palestinian media reported that a well-known hospital consultant was among 12 people killed in an Israeli strike on a busy market in Gaza City.
The health ministry in Gaza said more than 58,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023. The ministry added that 139 people had been killed in the past 24 hours alone. While it does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, it said more than half of the dead were women and children.
Impact Shorts
View AllNo breakthrough in ceasefire talks
Efforts to reach a ceasefire remained stalled over the weekend, with both sides blaming each other for the lack of progress.
Talks based on a US proposal for a 60-day pause in fighting are being held in Doha, but sources familiar with the negotiations say the two sides remain far apart on issues including the scope of an Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza.
The war began on 7 October 2023, when Hamas-led militants entered Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages are believed to still be alive.
Israel’s campaign to defeat Hamas has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza, which exceeds 2 million people. But Gazans say there is no safe place left in the coastal territory.
On Sunday morning, a missile hit a house in Gaza City where a family had moved after being ordered to evacuate their home in the south.
“My aunt, her husband and the children, are gone. What is the fault of the children who died in an ugly bloody massacre at dawn?” said Anas Matar, speaking amid the rubble.
“They came here, and they were hit. There is no safe place in Gaza,” he said.
With inputs from Reuters
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