Emergency crews recover bodies in Gaza as talks continue
Deir al-Balah: Dozens of bodies collected throughout Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood arrived at Al-Ahli Hospital on Friday morning while civil defence workers said they continued to recover the dead from destroyed streets and buildings.
Hospital director Fadel Naem told The Associated Press that people both dead and wounded had been brought from Tel al-Hawa to the hospital less than a day after it resumed operations
following the evacuation earlier in the week due to the fighting in the area.
About 60 bodies have been recovered, including entire families who appeared to have been killed by artillery fire and aerial bombardment, Mahmoud Basal, the director of Civil Defense in Gaza said.
“There are homes that we cannot reach, and there are those who were burned inside their homes,” he said, noting many of those who were killed had left nearby shelters after being ordered to evacuate.
The Israeli military said it could not comment on Tel al-Hawa.
The scenes mirror those in another Gaza City neighbourhood, Shuja’iyyah, from which Israel’s military has withdrawn in recent days.
On Thursday, civil defence workers found an additional 60 bodies in Shuja’iyyah under similar circumstances, with more believed to be buried under rubble. Basal said bodies in Tel al-Hawa were found decomposing or partially mauled by dogs.
The latest announcements of casualties comes as the United Nations estimates that about 300,000 Palestinians were still in northern Gaza, as of earlier this week, despite being ordered to evacuate.
Much of the population left earlier in the war. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are now experiencing widespread hunger while crammed into squalid tent camps.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and
bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its
count.
Meanwhile in Cairo, mediators continue to push to narrow gaps between Israel and Hamas over a proposal deal that would include a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza.
