An Israeli army inquiry cleared IDF troops in the killing of a family of five in the Gaza Strip.
A blast early Monday killed a Palestinian mother and her four children while they were preparing to eat breakfast in their home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun. Palestinians blamed an Israeli missile strike.
An army inquiry concluded that an air-launched missile had hit its target, four gunmen who had been targeting Israeli troops, and that the missile hit no other targets, according to a statement released Friday.
The gunmen were carrying backpacks loaded with weaponry, and the army theorized that the family might have been killed in a secondary blast caused when the missile hit a gunman’s weaponry, or that the mother and her children were knocked down by the force of the second blast, or hit by debris.
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