KHAN YUNIS – Multiple airstrikes hit Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis overnight into Thursday, killing more than 50 people in a second consecutive night of heavy bombing, while another airstrike in the north of the Palestinian territory left more than a dozen people dead, authorities said.
The strikes come as U.S. President Donald Trump visits the Middle East, visiting Gulf states but not Israel. There had been widespread hope that Trump’s regional visit could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.
An Associated Press cameraman in Khan Younis counted 10 airstrikes on the city overnight into Thursday, and saw numerous bodies taken to the morgue in the city’s Nasser Hospital. It took time to identify some of the bodies due to the extent of their injuries. The hospital’s morgue confirmed 54 people had been killed.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes.
It was the second night of heavy bombing, after airstrikes Wednesday on northern and southern Gaza killed at least 70 people, including almost two dozen children.
Another strike in Jabaliya in northern Gaza hit a complex including a mosque and a small medical clinic, killing 13 people, said the Civil Defense, a first responder agency operating under Gaza’s Hamas-run government.
Mourning for the dead in Khan Younis
In Nasser Hospital, Safaa Al-Najjar, her face stained with blood, wept as the shroud-wrapped bodies of two of her children were brought to her: 1 1/2-year-old Motaz Al-Bayyok and 1 1/2 month-old Moaz Al-Bayyok.
The family was caught in the overnight airstrikes. All five of Al-Najjar’s other children, ranging in ages from 3 to 12, were injured, while her husband was in intensive care.
One of her sons, 11-year-old Yusuf, his head heavily bandaged, screamed in grief as the shroud of his younger sibling was parted to show his face.
“I gave them dinner and put them to sleep as usual, it was a normal day. Suddenly I don’t know what happened, the world went upside down,” she said as others tried to comfort her. “I don’t know, I don’t know … what is their fault? What is their fault?”
Outside the hospital, mourners gathered to pray as the dead, laid out in rows in white body bags, were loaded onto a truck to be taken for burial.
Israel has vowed to escalate the war
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed earlier in the week to push ahead with a promised escalation of force in Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip to pursue his aim of destroying the Hamas militant group, which governs Gaza.
In comments released by Netanyahu’s office Tuesday, the prime minister said Israeli forces were days away from entering Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission … It means destroying Hamas.”
International rights group Human Rights Watch said Thursday that Israel’s stated plan of seizing Gaza and displacing hundreds of thousands of people “inches closer to extermination,” and called on the international community to speak out against it.
The war began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in an Oct. 7, 2023 intrusion into southern Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants. Almost 3,000 have been killed since Israel broke a ceasefire on March 18, the ministry said.
The Health Ministry said Thursday morning that the bodies of 82 people killed in Israeli strikes, including the 54 in Khan Younis, had been brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours. The overall Palestinian death toll rose to 53,010, with another 119,998 people wounded.
Hamas still holds 58 of the roughly 250 hostages it took during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, with 23 believed to still be alive, although Israeli authorities have expressed concern for the status of three of those.
Gaza’s only hospital providing cancer treatments out of service due to Israeli strikes
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday that Israeli strikes have rendered the European Hospital Khan Younis — the only remaining facility providing cancer treatments in Gaza — out of service due to severe damage to its infrastructure and access roads.
The shutdown halts all specialized treatments, including cardiac surgeries and cancer care, the ministry added.
The Israeli military conducted two airstrikes against the European Hospital on Tuesday, saying it was targeting a Hamas command center beneath the facility. Six people were killed in the strike.
European Hospital director Imad al-Hout told AP there had been 200 patients in the hospital at the time of Tuesday’s strikes. They were all gradually evacuated, with the last 90 transferred to other hospitals, including Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, on Wednesday morning. Efforts were now underway to coordinate repairs to the facility, he added.
Israeli blockade of aid into Gaza in its third month
Palestinians in northern Gaza lined up Thursday near areas under Israeli bombardment in a desperate attempt to obtain food, as Israel’s aid blockade entered its third month.
At the charity kitchen set up atop piles of rubble in Beit Lahia, dozens of Palestinians stood in a crowded line, pressing against one another, holding empty pots and plastic containers high in the air in hopes of receiving vegetable soup.
Um Abed, who is displaced with 20 family members, waited in line from 9 a.m. and went home empty-handed for the second day in a row as the number of people far exceeded the available food.
“I have a 3-year-old child who’s crying all day because he wants to eat … we want them to stop the war and to allow food in,” Um Abed cried and yelled as she held up her empty pot to the camera.
Israel’s offensive has obliterated vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape and displaced 90% of the population, often multiple times. It halted the entry of all aid, including food and medication, into the territory on March 2, and international food security experts have warned that Gaza will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military campaign.
Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation while 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer on Thursday denied there was a food shortage in Gaza and claimed Hamas was “holding onto it … they need to open up the food to the people.”
Human Rights Watch said Israel’s plan to seize Gaza and remain there, coupled with the “systematic destruction” of civilian infrastructure and the block on all imports into the territory, were cause for signatories to the Genocide Convention to act to prevent Israel’s moves. The group also called on Hamas to free the hostages it still holds.
Israel vehemently denies accusations that it is committing genocide in Gaza.
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Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.
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This story has been corrected to delete reference to a journalist for Al Araby TV being killed. The network says it does not employ a journalist of that name.
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