At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen others wounded on Sunday in central Gaza after an Israeli missile strike missed its intended target, local officials said.
According to the Israeli military, the strike was aimed at a suspected Islamic Jihad militant in the Nuseirat refugee camp but a technical malfunction caused the missile to land “dozens of metres” from its target. “The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians,” the military said in a statement, adding that the incident was under review.
The missile instead struck a water distribution centre in the densely populated camp, killing six children and injuring 17 others, said Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital.
Water scarcity in Gaza has intensified over recent weeks as fuel shortages have crippled desalination and sanitation infrastructure, forcing residents to rely on public collection points for access to clean water.
In a separate strike on Sunday morning, 12 more people, including a well-known hospital consultant, were killed in an Israeli attack on a bustling market in Gaza City, according to Palestinian media.
Rising death toll in Gaza
Gaza’s health ministry reported that more than 58,000 people have died since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7, 2023, with 139 new deaths recorded in the past 24 hours. Although the ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its casualty reports, it says over half of those killed are women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. Israel’s subsequent offensive has displaced nearly the entire 2-million-strong population of Gaza.
Talks blocked
Talks aimed at securing a ceasefire appeared to be deadlocked, with the two sides divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources said at the weekend.
The indirect talks over a U.S. proposal for a 60-day ceasefire were continuing in Doha, but optimism that surfaced last week of a possible deal has largely faded, with both sides accusing each other of intransigence.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas has displaced almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, but Gazans say nowhere is safe in the coastal enclave.
Early on Sunday morning, a missile hit a house in Gaza City where a family had moved to after receiving an evacuation order from their home in the southern outskirts.
“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, standing in the rubble of the building.
“They came here, and they were hit. There is no safe place in Gaza,” he said.
(With inputs from Reuters)