Palestinian mother and 4 children killed in Gaza carnage

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli fire hit a house in the Gaza Strip on Monday while a family was eating breakfast, killing six Palestinians, including four children and their mother, residents and medical workers said.

Israel challenged the account, describing the deaths as tragic and saying they occurred when an aircraft fired at two militants carrying bags filled with munitions that detonated and destroyed the home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

Local residents said no militants were killed in the explosion.

"They have wiped out my family," said the children's father, Ahmed Abu Meateq, blaming Israeli forces and weeping as the bodies were prepared for burial.

The carnage cast another shadow over Egyptian efforts to forge a ceasefire between Israel and militant groups and end violence threatening U.S.-brokered Palestinian statehood talks.

"This aggression does not serve efforts being exerted to achieve calm, and it obstructs the peace process," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, referring to Israel's military activities, said in a statement carried by WAFA news agency.

Israeli Defense 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".

The army said in a statement late on Monday it was probing the incident and would report its findings within 48 hours.

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.

"They were eating and they were hit," a neighbor said at the site, where chickens pecked at a bloodstained floor and cooked potatoes grew cold in a pot.

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

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, called the death of the family a "tragic incident".

"We make every possible effort to prevent civilians from being caught in the crossfire," Regev said.

Separately, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian gunman from Islamic Jihad during fighting in the town, the group said.