Multiple Israeli airstrikes killed at least three dozen Palestinians in southern Gaza, health workers said Saturday, as officials gathered for high-level ceasefire talks in neighbouring Egypt.
Among the dead were 11 members of a family, including two children, after an airstrike hit their home in Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital, which received a total of 33 bodies. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said it received three bodies from another strike.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.
First responders also recovered 16 bodies from the Hamad City area of Khan Younis after a partial pull-out of Israeli forces, 10 bodies from a residential block west of Khan Younis and two farther south in Rafah. The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear, but the areas were repeatedly bombed by the Israeli military over the past week.
Some residents returned to Hamad City, crunching on rubble as they walked between destroyed apartment buildings. One multi-story building’s entire wall was gone, its rooms framing residents picking through debris.
“There is nothing, no apartment, no furniture, no homes, only destruction,” said one woman, Neveen Kheder. “We are dying slowly. You know what, if they gave a mercy bullet it would be better than what is happening to us.”
Experts were meeting Saturday on technical issues ahead of Sunday’s high-level talks in Cairo on a possible ceasefire mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar. CIA Director William Burns, Qatar’s foreign minister and Egypt’s spy chief were meeting Saturday evening in Cairo, according to an Egyptian official with direct knowledge of the talks.
A Hamas delegation arrived Saturday in Cairo to meet with Egyptian and Qatari officials, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawy told the AP. He stressed that Hamas will not take part directly in Sunday’s talks but will be briefed by Egypt and Qatar.
The CIA director and Brett McGurk, a senior adviser to President Joe Biden on the Middle East, are leading the US side of negotiations amid major differences between Israel and Hamas over Israel’s insistence that it maintain forces in two strategic corridors in Gaza.
The US has been pushing a proposal that aims at closing the gaps between Israel and Hamas as fears grow over a wider regional war after the recent targeted killings of leaders of the militant Hamas and Hezbollah groups, both blamed on Israel.
Euronews
