Israeli gunfire kills mother, 4 children in Gaza

Israeli gunfire hit a house in the Gaza Strip today while a family was eating breakfast, killing six Palestinians, including four children and their mother, residents and medical officials said.

"They have wiped out my family," said the children's father, Ahmed Abu Meateq, putting his hands on his head in despair and weeping as the bodies were prepared for burial.

The deaths in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun cast another shadow on Egyptian efforts to forge a ceasefire between Israel and militant groups and end violence threatening US-brokered Palestinian statehood talks.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, without giving details of the raid in Beit Hanoun, said Hamas Islamists controlling the Gaza Strip bore overall responsibility for casualties among non-combatants because gunmen "operated among civilians".

Medical officials and residents of Beit Hanoun, an area where militants frequently fire rockets at Israel, said an Israeli projectile smashed through the ceiling of a one-storey house where a family was having breakfast. They said four children, siblings whose ages ranged from 1-1/2 to 5-years-old and their mother were killed in the house during what the Israeli military described as an operation against rocket launching crews and snipers.

A 17-year-old Palestinian civilian who was passing by the home was also killed in the explosion, medical workers said. - Reuters