DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed in the nearly two-year war in the Gaza Strip, local health officials said Thursday, as Hamas and Israel reiterated their incompatible demands for ending the fighting sparked by the militant group’s 2023 attack.
Israeli strikes killed 28 people, mostly women and children, overnight and into Thursday, according to hospitals, as Israel pressed ahead with its offensive in famine-stricken Gaza City.
The latest strikes came as Israeli troops were operating in parts of Gaza City with plans to take over all of it. The most populous Palestinian city is home to around a million people many of whom have already been displaced multiple times.
Shifa Hospital in Gaza City received 25 bodies, including nine children and six women, after Israeli strikes hit tents housing displaced people, according to hospital records. Among those killed was a 10-day-old baby. Another three people were killed in southern Gaza, according to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Maha Afana said the strikes woke her up in the middle of the night as she slept in a tent in Gaza City with her children. When she checked on them she found the bodies of her son and daughter, drenched with blood. “I started screaming,” she said.
