(Changes defence minister's name in paragraph 4) By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA, April 28 (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 officials said. 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 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 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. "They were eating and they were hit," a neighbour 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. Separately, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian gunman from Islamic Jihad during fighting in the town, the faction said. MISSILES, SHELLS The Israeli military said aircraft and a tank unit fired at groups of gunmen that tried to approach troops in the town but no houses were targeted. "There are several versions of this event which are being investigated," Major Avital Leibovich, an Israeli military spokeswoman said about the deaths in the house. "What I can say at this stage is that the gunmen that attacked our forces did so from a populated neighbourhood, from among the houses," she said. "This is another example of them using civilians as human shields for their terrorist activities." Hamas's armed wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades, said it fired three rockets at the Israeli border town of Sderot in response to the Beit Hanoun killings. There were no reports of casualties in Sderot. Hamas has offered Israel a six-month truce if it lifted an embargo on the territory. "But after the continuing crimes we advise all parties that our people should not be blamed for anything they may do to end the aggression and break the siege," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told a news conference. Israel has balked at entering into a formal agreement with Hamas, which is officially committed to its destruction, but has said it would have no reason to attack in the Gaza Strip if Palestinians stopped their rocket fire. Islamic Jihad and two other Palestinian factions said they launched several rockets before and after the home in Beit Hanoun was hit. (Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Editing by xx)
A man walks past an overturned bus after an accident in Jammu April 28, 2008. At least 13 children were injured when the school bus fell into a crater, police said ...
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