Six children killed while collecting water in Gaza, IDF blames missile malfunction
The Israeli military said the missile had intended to hit an Islamic Jihad fighters in the area but that a malfunction had caused it 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.
Hours later, 12 people were killed by an Israeli strike on a market in Gaza City, including a prominent hospital consultant, Ahmad Qandil, Palestinian media reported. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the attack. 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.
CEASEFIRE?
US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that he was "hopeful" on Gaza ceasefire negotiations underway in Qatar.
He told reporters in Teterboro, New Jersey, that he planned to meet senior Qatari officials on the sidelines of the FIFA Club World Cup final.
However, negotiations aimed at securing a ceasefire have been stalling, 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.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to convene ministers late on Sunday to discuss the latest developments in the talks, an Israeli official said.
The indirect talks over a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire are being held in Doha, but optimism that surfaced last week of a looming deal has largely faded, with both sides accusing each other of intransigence.
Netanyahu in a video he posted on Telegram on Sunday said Israel would not back down from its core demands - releasing all the hostages still in Gaza, destroying Hamas and ensuring Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel.
The war began on Oct 7, 2023, when Hamas-led fighters 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.
Families of hostages gathered outside Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem to call for a deal.
"The overwhelming majority of the people of Israel have spoken loudly and clearly. We want to do a deal, even at the cost of ending this war, and we want to do it now," said Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was held hostage by Hamas in a Gaza tunnel and slain by his captors in August 2024.
Netanyahu and his ministers were also set to discuss a plan on Sunday to move hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the southern area of Rafah, in what Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has described as a new "humanitarian city" but which would be likely to draw international criticism for forced displacement.
An Israeli source briefed on discussions in Israel said that the plan was to establish the complex in Rafah during the ceasefire, if it is reached.
On Saturday, a Palestinian source familiar with the truce talks said that Hamas rejected withdrawal maps which Israel proposed, because they would leave around 40pct of the territory under Israeli control, including all of Rafah.
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 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.--REUTERS
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Straits Times
29 minutes ago
- New Straits Times
Israeli 'humanitarian city' plan triggers backlash
AN Israeli proposal to move Gazans into a so-called "humanitarian city" has come under intense fire, slammed by critics as a costly distraction at best, and at worst a potential step towards forcing Palestinians off of their land. Defence Minister Israel Katz first unveiled the plan during a briefing with reporters last Monday. It envisions building from scratch a closed zone in southern Gaza during a potential 60-day ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas, currently under negotiation in Qatar. According to Katz, the area would initially house around 600,000 displaced people from southern Gaza and include four aid distribution sites managed by international organisations. The entire civilian population of Gaza — more than two million people — would eventually be relocated there. Critics, however, have questioned both the feasibility and ethics of the plan, with Israel's opposition leader citing its astronomical cost, and one expert pointing to lack of infrastructure in the area necessary to accommodate so many people. The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has described the proposed facility as a "concentration camp", while Britain's minister for the Middle East and North Africa has said he is "appalled" by the idea. "Palestinian territory must not be reduced," said Hamish Falconer on X. "Civilians must be able to return to their communities." Nearly 21 months of war have devastated much of the Gaza Strip, displacing most of its population, creating dire shortages of food and other essentials, and killing 58,026 people, most of them civilians. The Oct 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war led to 1,219 deaths, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures New arrivals to the proposed facility would undergo security screening to ensure they are not affiliated with Hamas, and once admitted, they would not be permitted to leave. Israeli military would provide security "from a distance", Katz has said. The criticism of the plan reportedly extends even to Israel's own security establishment. Army chief Eyal Zamir lambasted the proposal at a cabinet meeting, arguing it would divert focus from the military's core objectives: defeating Hamas and securing the return of hostages taken on Oct 7. The broadcaster Channel 12 reported that unnamed security officials viewed the plan as little more than a "gigantic tent city", and warned it could pave the way for a return to Israeli military rule in Gaza. Such a move aligns with the long-standing goals of far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, key coalition partners of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both Smotrich and Ben Gvir advocate the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza. The projected expense of the initiative — estimated between 10 and 20 billion shekels — has further fuelled domestic outrage as the cost of nearly two years of war mounts. "Netanyahu is letting Smotrich and Ben Gvir run wild with extremist delusions just to preserve his coalition. Instead of plundering the middle class's money, end the war and bring back the hostages," said opposition leader Yair Lapid on X on Sunday. The Palestinian Authority was scathing in appraisal of the proposed facility, with its foreign ministry saying: "The humanitarian city has nothing to do with humanity." That view was echoed by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which said the "plan would de-facto create massive concentration camps at the border with Egypt". A Palestinian official with knowledge of the ongoing ceasefire talks in Qatar said Hamas rejected plans to concentrate Palestinians in a small part of the south, viewing it as "preparation for forcibly displacing them to Egypt or other countries". Amnesty International, which has accused Israel of genocide, warned that relocating Gazans within the territory or "deporting them outside against their will would amount to the war crime of unlawful transfer".
Free Malaysia Today
35 minutes ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Netanyahu says any future Palestinian state would be a platform to destroy Israel
President Donald Trump (second from left) hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and officials at a White House dinner. (AP pic) WASHINGTON : Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he wanted peace with Palestinians but described any future independent state as a platform to destroy Israel and for that reason sovereign power of security must remain with Israel. Speaking at the White House, where he met US President Donald Trump, Netanyahu described the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, where Hamas was in control, as evidence of what Palestinians would do with a state. Trump said, 'I don't know' when he was asked by reporters if a two-state solution was possible and referred the question to Netanyahu. Netanyahu said: 'After Oct 7th, people said the Palestinians have a state, a Hamas state in Gaza and look what they did with it. They didn't build it up. They built down into bunkers, into terror tunnels after which they massacred our people, raped our women, beheaded our men, invaded our cities and our towns, our kibbutzim and did horrendous massacres, the kind of which we didn't see since World War Two and the Nazis, the Holocaust. So people aren't likely to say, 'Let's just give them another state.' It'll be a platform to destroy Israel. 'We will work out a peace with our Palestinian neighbours, those who don't want to destroy us and we will work out a peace in which our security, the sovereign power of security, always remains in our hands,' Netanyahu said. 'Now people will say, 'It's not a complete state, it's not a state, it's not that.' We don't care. We vowed never again. Never again is now. It's not going to happen again.' Palestinians have long sought to create an independent state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem through a US-mediated peace process. Many accuse Israel of having destroyed Palestinian statehood prospects through increased settlement building in the West Bank and by levelling much of Gaza during the current war. Israel rejects this. Cabinet ministers in Netanyahu's Likud party called last week for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Knesset recesses at the end of July. Israel's pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the White House of Trump, who has proposed Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond. The Gaza war erupted when Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Some 50 hostages remain in Gaza, with 20 believed to be alive. Israel's subsequent assault on the Palestinian enclave has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry. Most of Gaza's population has been displaced by the war. Trump hosted Netanyahu at a White House dinner on Monday, while Israeli officials held indirect negotiations with Hamas in Qatar aimed at securing a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal.
Free Malaysia Today
36 minutes ago
- Free Malaysia Today
Israeli far-right minister demands end to Gaza ceasefire talks
Israel's national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for a 'total siege' of the Gaza Strip. (AP pic) JERUSALEM : Israel's far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir today urged prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call back a delegation conducting indirect talks with Hamas in Qatar for a ceasefire in Gaza. 'I call on the prime minister to immediately recall the delegation that went to negotiate with the Hamas murderers in Doha,' Ben Gvir said in a post on X on the third day of talks between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement. Instead, the minister who lives in a West Bank settlement called for 'total siege, military crushing, encouraging emigration (of Palestinians outside of Gaza), and (Israeli) settlement' in the Gaza Strip. He called these measures 'the keys to total victory, not a reckless deal that would release thousands of terrorists and withdraw the (Israeli army) from areas captured with the blood of our soldiers'. A Palestinian official close to the talks told AFP today that the talks were ongoing, with a focus on 'the mechanisms for implementation, particularly the clauses related to withdrawal and humanitarian aid'. Netanyahu travelled to Washington for his third visit since Trump's return to power, where the US president on Monday voiced confidence that a deal could be reached. The Israeli leader ruled out a full Palestinian state, insisting Israel would 'always' keep security control over the Gaza Strip. Israel has been waging war on Hamas in Gaza for over 21 months, its troops gradually occupying more and more of the Palestinian territory. According to the UN, 82% of Gaza is now under Israeli military control or displacement orders. The war was triggered by Hamas's unprecedented attack on southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023. The attack resulted in 1,219 deaths on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. Of the 251 people abducted that day, 49 are still hostages in Gaza, including 27 declared dead by the Israeli army. At least 57,523 Gazans, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israel's retaliatory campaign, according to data from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The figures are deemed reliable by the UN.
