Mourners have held funeral prayers outside a hospital in central Gaza for 28 people killed in three separate Israeli air strikes on urban refugee camps the previous night.
Video footage showed mourners praying over the bodies, which were wrapped in funeral shrouds, before the bodies were taken away in carts for burial.
Nineteen people, including five women and nine children, were killed when a strike flattened a family home on Tuesday in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp.
Another person was killed in a separate strike in the camp, while a strike in the nearby Bureij camp killed eight people, including three women.
The dead were brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, the main medical facility in central Gaza. An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies and their names in hospital records.
Nuseirat and Bureij are among several dense, built-up refugee camps in Gaza that date back to 1948, when an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the war surrounding its creation.
Refugees and their descendants make up a majority of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million.
As fighting rages on in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is determined to carry out a Rafah ground offensive, despite US President Joe Biden’s misgivings.
Famine – even in northern #Gaza – could still be averted. We need:
🔴 An immediate stop to the fighting 🔴 Full access for aid organizations to reach the entire civilian population
A declaration of #famine means it’s too late. We must act now to save thousands of lives.
— World Food Programme (@WFP) March 19, 2024
Earlier, Qatari officials said they were “cautiously optimistic” after talks with Israel’s intelligence chief in Doha aimed at trying to reach a ceasefire.
However, Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said an Israeli ground operation in Rafah would set back any talks.
At least 31,819 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but says women and children make up two thirds of the dead.
A United Nations food agency has warned that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza.
Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people in the surprise October 7 attack out of Gaza that triggered the war, and and abducted another 250 people.
Hamas is still believed to be holding some 100 people hostage, as well as the remains of 30 others.
