Egypt is due to host Friday a high-level Hamas delegation for talks aimed at putting an end to the nearly 12-week war with Israel that has devastated the Gaza Strip.
The Cairo meeting comes as fighting — triggered by Hamas’s deadly October 7 attack on Israel — rages in the besieged Palestinian territory’s south and centre.
Israeli shelling near a southern Gaza hospital has killed 41 people over the past two days, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Thursday.
The casualties in repeated Israeli strikes near the Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis include “displaced persons seeking shelter”, the Red Crescent said in a statement.
The UN humanitarian office said an estimated 100,000 more displaced people had arrived in the already-teeming southern border city of Rafah in recent days following the intensification of fighting around Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis.
The Israeli military on Friday said its forces “are extending operation in Khan Yunis” and had “eliminated dozens of terrorists” across Gaza over the past 24 hours.
AFPTV footage showed smoke billowing over Rafah, near Egypt, following fresh strikes early Friday.
The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Thursday Israeli shelling had killed 20 people, most of them women and children, at the Shaboura camp in Rafah.
The Gaza fighting left much of the territory’s north in ruins, while the battlefront has shifted ever further to the south and raised tensions across the Middle East.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas — dubbed a “terrorist” group by the United States and European Union — in retaliation for the October attack which left about 1,140 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Around 250 hostages were also taken during the attack, more than half of whom remain captive.
Israel’s relentless aerial bombardment and ground invasion in Gaza have killed at least 21,320 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.
The Israeli army says 168 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza.
Sources close to Hamas say Egypt’s three-stage plan provides for renewable ceasefires, a staggered release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, and ultimately an end to the war.
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The Israeli army has said it had deployed an additional brigade to Khan Yunis, hometown of Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, and AFP correspondents reported sustained air and artillery strikes.
“The missions that our forces are carrying out in Khan Yunis are unprecedented… taking over control rooms and eliminating terrorists,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told soldiers on Thursday.
Israel has repeatedly said that one of the chief goals of the war is the return of the 129 hostages it says remain in Gaza.
On Thursday, an Israeli kibbutz community said one of its residents, US-Israeli Judith Weinstein Haggai who was thought to be the oldest woman held captive had in fact died in the October 7 attack and her body held by militants.
