Israeli strikes kill at least 40 Palestinians in Gaza
- 30 Nov 2024
Israeli military strikes killed at least 40 Palestinians overnight and on Friday in the Gaza Strip, medics said, as efforts to revive Gaza ceasefire talks received a boost with officials from the Palestinian group Hamas headed to Cairo for a new round of talks.
Medics said they had recovered 19 bodies of Palestinians killed in northern areas of Nuseirat, one of the enclave's eight long-standing refugee camps.
Later on Friday, an Israeli air strike killed at least 10 Palestinians in a house in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, medics said.
Others were killed in the northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, medics added. There was no fresh statement by the Israeli military on Friday, but on Thursday it said its forces were continuing to "strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip".
Israeli tanks had entered northern and western areas of Nuseirat on Thursday. They withdrew from northern areas on Friday but remained active in western parts of the camp. The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said teams were unable to respond to distress calls from residents trapped in their homes.
Dozens of Palestinians returned on Friday to areas where the army had retreated to check on damage to their homes.
Medics and relatives covered up dead bodies, including of women, that lay on the road with blankets or white shrouds and carried them away on stretchers.
"Forgive me, my wife, forgive me, my Ibtissam, forgive me, my dear," one grief-stricken man moaned through tears beside her corpse, laid out on a stretcher on the ground.
Medics said an Israeli drone on Friday had killed Ahmed Al-Kahlout, head of the Intensive Care Unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, where the army has been operating since early October.
Contacted by Reuters, the Israeli military said it was unaware of a strike occurring in this location or timeframe.
Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip that barely function now due to shortages of medical, fuel, and food supplies. Most of its medical staff have been detained or expelled by the Israeli army, health officials say.
The Palestinian civil emergency service, Hamas and the Palestinian official news agency WAFA put the number of Palestinians killed in two Israeli strikes in Beit Lahiya in the past 24 hours at 70. There was no immediate confirmation of the figure by the local health ministry.
Reuters
