Among those killed when a house in Khan Yunis was hit by an airstrike were a family of 11, including two children.
As officials gathered for high-level ceasefire talks in neighboring Egypt on Saturday, health officials said multiple Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 30 Palestinians in southern Gaza.
According to Nasser Hospital, 11 members of a family were killed in the airstrike on their home in Khan Yunis, including two children. The hospital recovered a total of 33 bodies. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said it recovered three bodies in another airstrike.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the reports.
Rescue workers also recovered 16 bodies from the Hamad City area of Khan Yunis after a partial Israeli withdrawal, 10 from a residential area west of Khan Yunis and two south of Rafah. The circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear, but the area has been repeatedly bombed by Israeli forces in the past week.
Some residents returned to Hamad City, walking through the rubble between the destroyed apartment buildings. Entire walls of one multi-story building were gone, and inside the rooms, residents were digging through the rubble.
“There’s nothing. No apartments, no furniture, no houses, just destruction,” said one woman, Nevin Kedder. “We’re dying slowly. You know, if they gave us a mercy bullet, it would be better than what’s happening to us.”
Experts met Saturday to discuss technical issues ahead of Sunday’s high-level talks in Cairo on a ceasefire brokered by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar. According to an Egyptian official with direct knowledge of the talks, CIA Director William Burns, Qatar’s foreign minister and Egypt’s intelligence chief met in Cairo Saturday evening.
A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Saturday and met with Egyptian and Qatari officials, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawi told The Associated Press. He stressed that Hamas would not be directly involved in Sunday’s talks but would be briefed by Egypt and Qatar.
CIA Director and President Joe Biden’s top Middle East adviser, Brett McGurk, is leading the U.S. side of the negotiations amid deep disagreements between Israel and Hamas over Israel’s insistence on maintaining troops in two strategic corridors in the Gaza Strip.
The United States has been pushing proposals aimed at bridging the gap between Israel and Hamas, amid growing concerns that the region could escalate into a regional war following recent killings of leaders of the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah that Israel has blamed.