At least 10 Palestinians, including six children, were killed by an Israeli airstrike on Sunday while waiting at a water refilling station in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Central Gaza, according to Gaza medics.

17 people were also injured in the strike, which the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has blamed a “technical error” according to multiple reports, adding that the intended target was an Islamic Jihad militant.

“The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians,” they said in a statement.

Al Jazeera correspondent Hani Mahmoud reported that this was not the first of such incidents, saying that it is nearly the 10th time “in the past few months when people were directly and deliberately targeted as they were trying to get water.”

Over 17,000 children killed in Gaza since October 2023

Over 58,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry. Many thousands are under the age of 18.

The ongoing 21-month war has killed at least 17,127 children, the Ministry’s latest statistics show.

Nearly 70% are between the ages of 6-18. Over 25% are infants.

“Every single day since the start of the war in #Gaza, on average, a classroom full of children have been killed,” UNRWA Acting Director Sam Rose said in a BBC radio interview on Monday.

UNRWA is the main United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel has banned from operating in Gaza since January.