OMG! Innocent children killed in Gaza playground

Missiles have struck several sites in Gaza, including a park inside a refugee camp and an outpatient building of the strip's largest hospital, disrupting a relative lull at the start of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

Eight people, including seven children, died following missile fire on a park inside the Shati refugee camp on the edge of Gaza City, medics said.

The children were playing on a swing when the strike hit the park, Ayman Sahabani, the head of the emergency room at Shifa hospital, told reporters.

Munzer al-Derby, 35, who witnessed the strike, told Al Jazeera: "The kids were playing on the wheel... A rocket fell and cut them apart."

"I know some of them. They were from Al-Helou family who left their homes in Shujayea (east Gaza city, where massive artillery fire destroyed neighbourhoods). They came here and rented an apartment last week," al-Derby said.

The Israeli army swiftly denied it was behind the strike, tweeting that a misfired rocket from Gaza had hit the playground.

"We had no activity in the area. We know it was launched from within Gaza and landed short," Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said.

However, Hamas denied it had fired any rockets in the area and said it was "categorically an airstrike by Israel". It said it had collected schrapnel from the scene that it could prove was from an Israeli munition.

Medics said that an Israeli missile also hit a building, believed to be an outpatient clinic, close to the main gate of Shifa hospital, the same hospital where the victims of the playground strike were taken.

Aljazeera