AFP: A first consignment of fuel has entered Gaza after US pressure on Israel, allowing communications to resume in the territory, where a hospital director on Saturday said 26 people had been killed in a strike in Khan Yunis.
A two-day blackout caused by fuel shortages ended after a first delivery arrived from Egypt late Friday, but UN officials continued to plead for a ceasefire, warning no part of Gaza is safe.On Saturday, the director of the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis said it had received the bodies of 26 people, as well as 23 people with serious injuries, after an air strike on a residential building in the southern region’s Hamad city.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. It has been pressing operations in Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa in the north of the territory, searching for the Hamas operations centre it says lies beneath.
Israel has vowed to “crush” Hamas in response to the group’s October 7 attack, which killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and saw around 240 people taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
The army’s air and ground campaign has since killed 12,000 people, including 5,000 children, according to Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007. Israel has imposed a siege on the territory, allowing just a trickle of aid in from Egypt but barring shipments.