Gazans mourn six killed in Israeli shelling on shelter

 

Dozens of Palestinians gathered at a Gaza City hospital on Saturday to mourn six people, including children, that the civil defence said were killed by the Israeli shelling of a shelter for displaced people.

The Israeli military said late on Friday that troops had fired at "suspicious individuals to eliminate the threat", adding that it was reviewing the incident and "regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals".

Gaza's civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, initially said on Friday that the Israeli shelling of a school-turned-shelter killed five people in the Tuffah neighbourhood east of Gaza City.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal updated the toll to six, including children, on Saturday, adding that two people were unaccounted for under the rubble.

The director of Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, told AFP the victims were a four-month old infant, a 14-year-old girl, two men and two women.

Inside the hospital's morgue on Saturday, relatives peered beneath blankets to get a last glimpse of their loved ones.Outside, a grief-stricken man clutched an infant's body wrapped in a white shroud, AFP footage showed.

Five other body bags were laid out on the ground as mourners prayed over the dead.