Israel’s continued bombardment of the Gaza Strip has hit areas to which it had asked Palestinians to evacuate in the south of the territory.
The strikes came a day after the United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, despite its broad support.
Gaza residents “are being asked to move like human pinball machines – ricocheting between smaller and smaller fragments of the south, without any of the foundations necessary for survival,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council. UN before Friday’s vote.
Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received 133 bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli bombardments over the past 24 hours, Gaza Health Ministry officials said Saturday.
Dozens of people held funeral prayers in the hospital courtyard before taking the bodies to be buried – a scene that had become common in the last two months of war.
In the southern town of Khan Younis, which was the center of Israeli military operations last week, Nasser Hospital received the bodies of 62 people, the ministry said.
More than 2,200 Palestinians have been killed since a week-long truce broke down on December 1, about two-thirds of them women and children.
As the war enters its third month, the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,700.