At least 13 people were killed in three Israeli air strikes that hit refugee camps in central Gaza overnight into Saturday, according to Palestinian health officials, as ceasefire talks in Cairo appear to make progress.
Among the dead in Nuseirat Refugee Camp and Bureij Refugee Camp were three children and one woman, according to Palestinian ambulance teams that transported the bodies to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital. The 13 corpses were counted by journalists at the hospital.
The latest casualties follow a rare moment of hope in war ravaged Gaza, after a medical team recovered a live baby from a heavily pregnant Palestinian mother killed in an air strike that hit her home in Nuseirat late Thursday evening.
Heavily pregnant Ola al-Kurd, 25, was killed along with six others in the blast, but emergency workers quickly rushed her to Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza in the hope of saving the unborn child. Hours later, doctors said that a baby boy had been delivered.
The still-unnamed newborn is stable but has suffered from a shortage of oxygen and has been placed in an incubator, said Dr. Khalil Dajran. The baby boy’s father was wounded in the same strike, but survived.
The war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 38,900 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Gaza Strip, displaced most of its 2.3 million population, and triggered widespread hunger.
Hamas’ October attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostages. About 120 remain in captivity, with about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
The Israel-Gaza war has left thousands of women and children dead, according to health officials in the Gaza Strip. In April, a premature Palestinian baby was rescued from her dead mother’s womb but died days later.
In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 20-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli forces late on Friday. Commenting on the shooting, the Israeli army said its forces opened fire on a group of Palestinians hurling rocks at Israeli troops in the town of Beit Ummar.
An eyewitness said Ibrahim Zaqeq was not directly involved in the clashes and was standing nearby.
Zaqeq “just looked at them, they shot him in the head. I picked him up from here and took him to the clinic,” said Thare Abu Hashem.
On Saturday, Hamas identified Zaqeq as one of its members. The militant group’s green flag was wrapped around his corpse during the funeral.
Violence has surged in the territory since the Gaza war began. At least 577 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli fire since then, according to the Ramallah-based Health Ministry, which tracks Palestinian deaths.
In Cairo, international mediators, including the United States, are continuing to push Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages in Gaza.
On Friday, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that will release Israeli hostages captive by the group in Gaza are “inside the 10-yard line,” but added “we know that anything in the last 10 yards are the hardest.”
Fruitless stop-and-start negotiations between the warring sides have been under way since November’s one-week ceasefire, with both Hamas and Israel repeatedly accusing each other of scuppering the effort as it approaches a deal.
