DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes and gunshots killed at least 42 people in Gaza overnight and into Saturday, according to Palestinian health officials and the local ambulance service, as starvation deaths continued and ceasefire talks appear to have stalled.
Gunfire killed at least a dozen people waiting for aid trucks close to the Zikim crossing with Israel in the north, said staff at Shifa hospital, where bodies were taken. Israel’s military said it fired warning shots to distance a crowd “in response to an immediate threat” and it was not aware of any casualties.
A witness, Sherif Abu Aisha, said people started running when they saw a light that they thought was from aid trucks, but as they got close, they realized it was Israel’s tanks. That’s when the army started firing, he told The Associated Press. He said his uncle was among those killed.
“We went because there is no food ... and nothing was distributed,” he said.
Elsewhere, those killed in strikes included four people in an apartment building in Gaza City, hospital staff and the ambulance service said. Another Israeli strike killed at least eight people, including four children, in the crowded tent camp of Muwasi in the city of Khan Younis in the south, according to the Nasser hospital, which received the bodies.
