Emergency workers claim to have recovered the bodies of approximately 60 Palestinians from two districts of Gaza City after Israeli forces pulled back from days of battles with Hamas militants in the territory’s biggest urban area.
The civil defence agency in Hamas-run Gaza on Friday said the bodies were found in the Tal al-Hawa and Al-Sinaa districts after the week-long offensive.
“There are still missing people under the rubble of destroyed homes, which is difficult for our crews to reach,” the agency’s spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said. “There are reports that many people are missing since the first day of the incursion.”
“There are many calls for help but we just cannot reach them. We just do not have enough crews,” Bassal added. He said the Sabha medical centre, near the Gaza City district of Shujaiya, which provides care for 60,000 residents, had been destroyed in the new fighting. This was not immediately confirmed by Israel.
The Israeli military and Shin Bet intelligence agency announced on Friday that they killed Ayman Shweidah, the deputy commander of Hamas’s Shujaiya battalion. The joint statement said he was involved in planning the 7 October attacks and took part in the fighting that followed.
On Wednesday the Israeli army had dropped leaflets warning “everyone in Gaza City” – the focus of a heavy Israeli assault this week – that it would “remain a dangerous combat zone”. The leaflets urged residents to flee and set out designated escape routes from the area where the UN humanitarian office said up to 350,000 people had been sheltering.
Many civilians told the Guardian they had concluded there was no refuge in war-stricken Gaza and said they lacked confidence in the safe corridors set by Israel. Residents said they also feared that if they left they would not be able to take belongings or return.
The offensive came as Arab mediators, backed by the US, are trying to reach a ceasefire deal that would free Israelis held hostage by Hamas in return for many Palestinians jailed by Israel.
Hamas said the heavy Israeli assault on Gaza City this week could wreck efforts to finally end the war just as negotiations have entered the home stretch. In a statement, the Palestinian Islamist militant group said mediators had yet to provide it with updates on the state of the talks since it made concessions last week in response to a US-backed Israeli peace offer.
“The occupation continues its policy of stalling to buy time to foil this round of negotiations, as it has done in previous rounds,” the statement said.
The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said the US was “cautiously optimistic” about talks taking place in Egypt and Qatar.
“There are still gaps remaining between the two sides,” Kirby told CNN. “We believe those gaps can be narrowed, and that’s what US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk and CIA director Bill Burns are trying to do right now.’’
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who faces opposition from within his coalition government to any deal that would halt the war without Hamas being vanquished, has said a deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until it meets all its objectives.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
