Dud shell explodes in Gaza, killing three Palestinians

Two others injured in blast in Shejaiya, apparently by shell fired during summer’s conflict

By AFP 19 September 2014, 8:42 pm 2

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A Palestinian family walks on August 27, 2014, past the collapsed remains of a building in Shejaiya that was destroyed in fighting between Hamas and Israel. (AFP/ROBERTO SCHMIDT)

A dud Israeli shell from this summer’s Gaza’s war exploded Friday, killing three people and leaving two others wounded in the north of the Palestinian enclave, medics said.

Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra, who said one of three wounded had died in hospital, said the shell exploded in the Shejaiya neighborhood.

The district on the edge of Gaza City was subjected to some of the heaviest Israeli shelling during the July-August conflict.

The war ended with a truce on August 26. It killed more than 2,140 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas Health Ministry, and 72 on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers. Israel says some 1,000 of the Gaza dead were gunmen, and that Hamas was to blame for all civilian deaths, having used Gazans as human shields for rocket fire and other elements of its war machine.

The conflict caused a vast amount of destruction to homes and infrastructure, leaving more than 100,000 Palestinians homeless in the long term, according to the UN.