KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — The U.S. worked to break a deadlock over delivering aid to millions of increasingly desperate civilians in the Gaza Strip, which has been besieged by Israel since a brutal attack by Hamas militants, as U.S. President Joe Biden prepared to head to the region.
Israeli airstrikes continued to pound Gaza early Tuesday, killing dozens of people in the besieged enclave’s south, where Israel told civilians from the north to seek shelter ahead of an expected ground offensive.
Wounded people were rushed to the hospital after heavy attacks outside the southern Gaza cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, Gaza residents reported. Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official and former health minister, reported that 27 people were killed in Rafah and 30 were killed in Khan Younis.
An Associated Press reporter saw around 50 bodies brought to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis since early Tuesday. Family members came to claim the bodies, wrapped in white bedsheets, some soaked in blood.
Israel has carried out unrelenting airstrikes against Hamas-ruled Gaza since the militant attack on southern Israel last week killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians. Dozens of Israelis and citizens of other countries were taken captive and brought to Gaza by militants. The Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,778 people and wounded 9,700 others in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry there. The strikes have not stopped Hamas militants from continuing to barrage Israel with rockets launched from Gaza.
The combination of airstrikes, dwindling necessities caused by Israel’s blockade, and Israel’s mass evacuation order for the north of the Gaza Strip has thrown the tiny territory’s 2.3 million people into upheaval and caused increasing desperation.
More than 1 million Palestinians have fled their homes, and 60% are now in the approximately 14-kilometer-long (8 mile) area south of the evacuation zone, the U.N. said. Aid workers warned that the territory was near complete collapse with…
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