Gaza officials said Israel strike killed children who collected water. IDF says there is a malfunction
At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed in central Gaza on Sunday and more than a dozen others were injured, local officials said.
The Israeli military said it had intended to hit Islamic jihadists in the region, but the failure caused the missile to “double-twice apart.”
“The IDF regrets any harm not involved in civilians,” it said in a statement.
Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital, said the strike attacked a water distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing six children and injuring 17 people.
Water shortages in Gaza have deteriorated dramatically in recent weeks, fuel shortages have led to desalination and sanitation facilities closures, leaving people relying on collection centers where they can fill plastic containers.
In another attack, Palestinian media reported that a prominent hospital consultant was one of 12 people killed by an Israeli strike in the mid-year busy market in Gaza.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday that more than 58,000 people have been killed since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023, with 139 killings in the past 24 hours.
The ministry did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but said more than half were women and children.
Talk blocked
Palestinian and Israeli sources said over the weekend that negotiations aimed at ensuring the ceasefire appeared to be deadlocked, flanked by the scope that was eventually evacuated from the Palestinian enclave.
Indirect negotiations on the U.S. proposal for a 60-day ceasefire continue, but optimism that could surface last week has gone apart, with both sides blaming each other for their uneasiness.
Two Canadian doctors from Calgary and Montreal have been treating patients at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza. The doctors and other health officials in the area said a severe fuel shortage left the operating room without light, oxygen tanks without air and basic medical treatment for patients under critical conditions.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when militants led by Hamas rushed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking hostages of 251, Gaza. It is believed that at least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages are still alive.
Israel’s movement against Hamas has displaced almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, but Gaza says no place is safe in coastal enclaves.
Early Sunday morning, a missile struck a house in Gaza City, where the family moved after receiving an evacuation order from their home in the southern suburbs.
“My aunt, her husband and the children are gone. What’s the fault of the children who died at dawn in the ugly bloody massacre?” said Anas Matar, standing among the rubble of the building.
“They came here and got hit. There is no safe place in Gaza,” he said.
