CAIRO (Reuters) – Israeli military strikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis killed at least 38 people since Thursday night and Israeli forces launched a night-time raid on a hospital in the north, Palestinian officials said.
The Gaza health ministry said many of the casualties from the Israeli strikes on houses in southeast Khan Younis were women and children.
The Israeli military said in a statement forces killed a number of Palestinian gunmen in air and ground strikes in the southern Gaza Strip and dismantled military infrastructure.
Some residents returned to the scene on Friday morning, sifting through rubble in an attempt to retrieve some of their clothes and documents, while children looked for their toys.
At the nearby Nasser Hospital, medics prepared the dead, among them three children wrapped in the same white shroud.
In the north of the enclave, where the area around the town of Jabalia has been the target of a weeks-long offensive, health officials said Israeli forces stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three medical facilities struggling to operate there, and stationed forces outside it.
"Since last night, at midnight, the occupation army tanks and bulldozers reached the hospital. The terrorising of civilians, the injured and children began as they (the Israeli army) started opening fire on the hospital," Eid Sabbah, the hospital's director of nursing, said in a voice note to Reuters.
He said when army retreated, a delegation from the World Health Organisation arrived with an ambulance and evacuated 40 patients. Israeli tanks returned and opened fire on the hospital, striking its oxygen stores, before raiding the building and ordering staff and patients to leave, Sabbah said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military or WHO on the hospital raid.
Israeli strikes on three houses in the nearby Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed 25 people and wounded dozens of others, medics said.
Medics at the three hospitals have refused Israeli orders to evacuate their hospitals and leave patients unattended. They said at least 800 Palestinians have been killed in northern Gaza since the army began the new offensive three weeks ago.
"IDF troops continue their operational activity in the area of Jabaliya and have eliminated dozens of terrorists, dismantled terrorist infrastructure, and located numerous weapons over the past day," the Israeli military said.
Israel says its forces returned to northern Gaza as Palestinian militant Hamas fighters had regrouped there.
NEW CEASEFIRE PUSH
The escalation came as the United States pushed for a new effort to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, that would end the war and see the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held captive in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed by Israel.
A Hamas official confirmed to Reuters on Friday that a delegation led by the group's chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya arrived in Cairo on Thursday for talks with Egyptian officials to discuss "ways to end the Israeli aggression on Gaza".
The official says Hamas was determined any agreement must end the war in Gaza, get Israeli forces out of the enclave and achieve a prisoners-for-hostages swap deal.
U.S. and Israeli negotiators will gather in Doha in the coming days to try to restart talks toward a deal, officials said on Thursday. Israel is also fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Qatar and Egypt have acted as mediators between Israel and Hamas in months of talks that broke down in August without an agreement to end the war that erupted when Hamas-led fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
As the war moves into its second year, the death toll from the Israeli campaign in Gaza is approaching 43,000, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.
The operation in northern Gaza has fuelled fears among Palestinians that Israeli forces are clearing the area in order to create a buffer zone for the military after the war or to pave the way for the return of settlers who left Gaza in 2005.
Israel has denied such plans and accuses Hamas of hindering the evacuation of civilians to provide cover for its own forces, which Hamas, in turn, denies.