JERUSALEM: At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen others were wounded in central Gaza Sunday, officials said, in a missile strike which Israel said missed its intended target. The Israeli military said it had intended to hit an Islamic Jihad militant in the area but that a malfunction had caused the missile to fall “dozens of metres from the target”. “The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians,” it said, adding that the incident was under review. The strike hit a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing six children and injuring 17 others, said Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital. Water shortage in Gaza has worsened sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages causing desalination and sanitation facilities to close, making people dependent on collection centres where they can fill up their plastic containers. In another attack, Palestinian media said a prominent hospital consultant was among 12 people killed by an Israeli strike mid-morning on a busy market in Gaza City. Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that more than 58,000 people had been killed since the start of the war in October 2023, with 139 people added to the toll over the past 24 hours. The ministry says over half of those killed are women and children. 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 US 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. REUTERS
