(REUTERS): Dozens of relatives wept and recited verses from the Koran, Islam’s holy book, at a Gaza Strip hospital on Friday before burying some of the 33 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a post office where they had been sheltering.
Medics said families displaced by the 14-month-old conflict had sought refuge in the postal facility in Nuseirat camp. The attack late on Thursday damaged several houses nearby.
Israel said it was targeting a senior Islamic Jihad member when it hit the structure.
Some of the bodies gathered al Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat were wrapped in white shrouds and others in blankets from home. The families accompanied them on a walk to their graves. “They have killed the hope and optimism,” said Suheil Mattar, whose grandchildren and daughter-in-law were killed.
“Every time things happen and we say there will be a truce and we will rest … After that, they change their minds, they change their minds, we don’t know why,” Mr Mattar said.
Months of ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to conclude a deal between the two warring sides.
Israel said it had targeted an Islamic Jihad leader of attacks on Israeli civilians and troops. It accused the militant group of exploiting civilian infrastructure and the population as a human shield for its activities. It did not identify the Islamic Jihad member by name.
Nuseirat is one of the Gaza Strip’s eight official camps originally for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war around the establishment of Israel. Today, it is part of a dense urban area crowded with displaced people from throughout the enclave.
“We’ve seen absolutely horrific images from the scene,” Louise Wateridge, a senior emergency officer for the UN Palestinian relief agency, Unrwa, told a UN press briefing in Geneva by video link from Nuseirat on Friday.
“There are parents looking for their children, children covered in dust and blood, looking for their parents, multiple injuries on top of the casualties reported and people still buried under the rubble,” she said.
On Friday, Palestinian health officials said at least 12 people were killed in separate Israeli air strikes across the enclave, including three in a tent housing a displaced family in Khan Younis and a local journalist in Gaza City.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in Tel Aviv on Thursday he believed a deal on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release may be close as Israel had signalled it was ready and there were signs of movement from Hamas.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began after Hamas-led gunmen on October 7th, 2023, stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Some 100 hostages remain in Gaza.
