By Euronews with AP
Published on •Updated
Israeli strikes killed at least 32 people in Gaza on Sunday as the Palestinian death toll surpassed 58,000 after 21 months of war, according to local health officials.
Officials at the Al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza said it received ten bodies following an Israeli strike on a water collection point in nearby Nuseirat. Six children were reportedly amongst the dead.
The Israeli Defence Forces said it was targeting a militant but a technical error made its munitions fall “dozens of metres from the target.”
Separately, health officials said an Israeli strike hit a group of citizens walking in the street on Sunday afternoon in central Gaza City, killing 11 people and injuring around 30 others.
In the central town of Zawaida, an Israeli strike on a home killed nine, including two women and three children, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said. Later, Al-Awda Hospital said a strike on a group of people in Zawaida killed two.
Israel’s military said it was unaware of the strike on the home, but said it hit more than 150 targets over the past 24 hours, including what it called weapons storage facilities, missile launchers and sniping posts.
Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militant group operates out of populated areas.
Despite months of talks aimed at securing a ceasefire, freeing Israeli hostages and getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, Israel and Hamas remain deadlocked. A key sticking point centres on whether Israeli troops should remain deployed during any pause in fighting.
Israel says it will end the war once Hamas surrenders, disarms and goes into exile – something Hamas refuses to do. Hamas says it is willing to free the remaining 50 hostages, about 20 of whom are said to be alive, in exchange for the war’s end and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces.
The war began when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people, most of them civilians. Hamas took 251 people as hostages.
A subsequent Israeli offensive has to date killed more than 58,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, whose figures do not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
The Israeli military says 890 of its soldiers have died since the start of the war.
