The bodies of 79 people killed by Israeli strikes have been taken to hospitals in the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday, a toll that does not include hospitals in the battered north which it said were now inaccessible.
The dead over the past day in Israel’s renewed military offensive included nine of one doctor’s 10 children, horrified colleagues and the health ministry said.
Alaa Najjar, a paediatrician at Nasser Hospital, was on duty at the time and ran home to find her family’s house on fire, said Ahmad al-Farra, head of the hospital’s paediatric department.
Ms Najjar’s husband was severely wounded and their only surviving child, an 11-year-old boy, was in a critical condition after Friday’s strike in the southern city of Khan Younis, Mr Farra said.
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The dead children ranged in age from seven months to 12 years old. Khalil Al-Dokran, a spokesman for Gaza’s health ministry, said two of the children remained under the rubble.
Israel’s military in a statement said it struck suspects operating from a structure next to its forces, and described the area of Khan Younis as a “dangerous war zone”.
It said it had evacuated civilians from the area and “the claim regarding harm to uninvolved civilians is under review”.
Earlier on Saturday, a statement said Israel’s air force struck more than 100 targets throughout Gaza over the past day.
The health ministry said the new deaths took the war’s toll to 53,901 since the Hamas-led attack on October 7th, 2023, that sparked the 19 months of fighting.
The ministry said 3,747 people had been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed the war on March 18th in an effort to put pressure on Hamas to accept different ceasefire terms.
[ Israeli use of Palestinian human shields in Gaza is widespread, detainees sayOpens in new window ]
Israel’s pressure on Hamas has included a blockade of Gaza and its more than two million people since early March.
This week, a small number of aid trucks entered the territory and began reaching Palestinians for the first time since the blockade began.
But they were far fewer than the about 600 trucks a day that had been entering during the ceasefire.
Warnings of famine by food security experts, and images of desperate Palestinians jostling for bowls of food at the ever-shrinking number of charity kitchens, led Israel’s allies to press the government of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to allow some aid to return.
Mr Netanyahu’s government has sought a new aid delivery and distribution system by a newly established US-backed group, but the United Nations and partners have rejected it, saying it allows Israel to use food as a weapon and violates humanitarian principles.
Israel may now be changing its approach to let aid groups remain in charge of non-food assistance, according to a letter obtained by the Associated Press.
Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid but the UN and aid groups deny there is significant diversion.
The October 7th attack on southern Israel that sparked the war killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants abducted 251 others.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive, which has destroyed large swathes of Gaza, has killed mostly women and children, according to the health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
Israel said it will continue to strike until Hamas releases all of the 58 remaining Israeli hostages and disarms.
Fewer than half of the hostages still in Gaza are believed to be alive.
Hamas has said it will return the remaining hostages only in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from the territory.
Mr Netanyahu has rejected those terms and has vowed to maintain control over Gaza and facilitate what he refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of its Palestinian population. – AP
