UN clears Israel and says errant Hamas rocket probably killed baby in Gaza

An errant Hamas rocket probably killed the baby son of a BBC journalist in Gaza during the brief war between the Palestinian group and Israel last November, according to a UN report into the incident.

A picture of video editor Jehad Mashhrawi cradling the corpse of his son Omar was splashed on the front pages of many newspapers around the world, but on Tuesday the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said that it did not think death was the result of an Israeli missile strike.

Officials from the OHCHR office visited the site four weeks after the incident and said that while they did not carry out a forensic examination and that it could not “unequivocally conclude” that a Hamas rocket was responsible, it was probably the case. Human rights groups at the time blamed an Israeli strike.

The UN says 33 other Palestinian children died in Israeli attacks during the eight-day conflict.