Israel launched its campaign in Gaza following the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7, in which the militants swept into the south and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 250.
Civil protection workers About 60 bodies have been unearthed from collapsed buildings in two districts of Gaza City after The Israeli army will withdraw after days of fighting against Hamas.
The Israeli army launched a raid on the districts of Tal al-Hawa and Sinaah earlier this week to fight what it considered Hamas militants who had regrouped there.
The videos that circulated on social networks showed civil protection workers wrapping corpsesincluding several women, in blankets on the rubble-strewn streets of Tal al-Hawa and Sinaah.
So far they have been found about 60 corpsesincluding entire families who appeared to have been killed by artillery fire and airstrikes as they tried to flee, said Mahmoud Bassal, director of civil protection in Gaza.
Some corpses had been partially eaten by dogsothers had burned inside homes and others remained untraceable among the rubblesaid.
The director of the nearby Al-Ahli hospital, Fadel Naem, said that at least 40 bodies found in the districts had been transferred to the center, although he did not have an exact number. The Israeli army said that He could not comment on the discovery of the bodies.
Israeli assault following evacuation notice
The Israeli assault on the districts began after on Monday issued an evacuation order for the area. In a statement issued on Friday, the army said its troops They had attacked the abandoned headquarters of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), where Hamas had established its operations.
UNRWA abandoned the complex in October, at the beginning of the war. The army declared on Friday that troops had clashed with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters in the complex and they had discovered material to build drones and weapons depots. He released photos of some of the discovered material, although the claims could not be independently confirmed.
By Friday, troops had withdrawn from most of the areabut snipers and drones were still opening fire, said Salem Elrayyes, a resident who fled to the south months ago but spoke with relatives who still remain in the neighborhood.
A day earlier, civil protection workers said they had Dozens of bodies found in Shijaiyahanother district of Gaza City from which Israeli troops withdrew in recent days after a two-week offensive.
Most of the population of Gaza City and surrounding northern areas fled at the beginning of the war, but the UN estimates that about 300,000 people remain in the north.
With each new assault, people often flee to other parts of the north, as Israel has so far not allowed those fleeing to the south to return to the north.
The conflict that began on October 7, 2022 is one of the deadliest in recent years with more than 38,300 people killed in Gaza and more than 88,000 injured, according to the territory’s Ministry of Health.
In its count, the ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. More than 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been expelled from their homesand the majority are now crammed into miserable tent camps, suffering widespread hunger.
