Gaza, Gaza Strip.- At least three dozen Palestinians have been killed in multiple Israeli strikes in the southern Gaza Strip, officials said Saturday, as preparations for high-level ceasefire talks in Egypt’s capital got underway.
The dead included 11 members of the same family, including two children, who were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit their home in the city of Khan Yunis early Saturday, according to Nasser Hospital, where the bodies and wounded were taken.
The hospital received a total of 33 fatalities from three separate attacks in and around Khan Younis. The city’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said it received three more bodies after an attack early Saturday. Another 17 people were killed in an attack that hit a road south of Khan Younis, including tuk-tuk passengers and passersby, Nasser Hospital said. Another attack hit a tuk-tuk east of Khan Younis, killing at least five.
The Israeli military said it was reviewing the reports but had no immediate comment.
Emergency crews recovered 10 bodies from a residential block west of Khan Yunis, six in the Hamad City area, also in Khan Yunis, and two more in Rafah, farther south. The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear, the hospital said, but those areas have been repeatedly shelled by the Israeli military over the past week. An Associated Press reporter at the hospital counted the bodies and recorded the funeral service held in the hospital’s courtyard. Experts were meeting Saturday to resolve technical issues and pave the way for high-level talks on Sunday on a possible cease-fire brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar. A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Saturday to meet Egyptian and Qatari officials, Mahmoud Merdawy, a senior Hamas official, told the AP. Merdawy stressed that Hamas would not be directly involved in Sunday’s talks but would be briefed by Egypt and Qatar. The Israeli delegation that arrived in the Egyptian capital on Thursday included David Barnea, head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad; the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service; and the country’s top general, Major General Eliezer Toledano.
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