At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen others were wounded in central Gaza on Sunday, local officials said, in an Israeli missile strike which the military 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 in a statement, 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 shortages in Gaza have 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 reported that 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 between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, with 139 people added to the death toll over the past 24 hours.

The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its tally, but says over half of those killed are women and children.

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 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.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages there are believed to still be alive.

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.