By Abdul Adil

Gaza City, (AA, Wafa, Al Jazeera): At least 48 more Palestinians were killed and 79 others injured by Israeli indiscriminate bombings in Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, the territory’s Health Ministry said on Sunday. This brings to total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks since 7 October to 34,097 Palestinians have been killed, including 14,520 children and 10,000 women and 76,980 others injured, including 12,000 children in Gaza Strip. In addition further 12,000 Palestinians are reported missing, presumed dead under the rubble.

Health officials in Gaza are now reporting that 22 people, including 18 children, were killed in the Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight.

The first Israeli strike in Rafah killed a man, his wife and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies.

The woman was pregnant, and the doctors saved the baby, the hospital said.

The second strike killed 17 children and two women from an extended family.

A relative, Umm Mohammad, told AP that the oldest killed, an 80-year-old aunt, was taken out “in pieces.” Small children were zipped into body bags.

Mohammed al-Beheiri said his daughter, Rasha, and her six children, the youngest 18 months old, were among those killed. A woman and three children were still under the rubble.

Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

In another area the Strip, several civilians were killed and many others were injured this evening in an Israeli air raid that targeted a house west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

According to local sources, the Israeli warplanes bombarded a house of the Al-Nuwayrī family in the Nuseirat camp, resulting in the killing of seven civilians.

Local sources said that the first raid targeted a house owned by Joudeh family in Ashdod camp area in the center of Rafah, killing 4 people, a husband, his wife, and their daughter.

A cesarean section was performed on a pregnant slain woman. The medical teams were able to save the infant’s life before the mother, her husband and her daughter were killed.

The sources added that the second raid targeted a house owned by Abdel-Al family east of Rafah, killing 15 civilians, including 13 children and two women. A number of people went missing, and rescue crews are still working to recover those trapped under the rubble.

Witnesses reported that the army targeted a farmland area in the Khirbat al ‘Adas region in northern Rafah, where a Palestinian refugee family resides.

WAFA correspondents reported that eight Palestinian citizens, including five children and two women, were killed in Israeli airstrikes that hit two homes in the city of Rafah.

Additionally, five civilians, including four children, were killed and others were injured in an Israeli bombing that targeted a house on George Street, east of Rafah.

Earlier in the night, three civilians were killed as a result of an Israeli raid that targeted a house in the Shaboura camp in the center of Rafah.

On Saturday, the Palestinian Civil Defense Administration in the Gaza Strip also reported that teams reached a significant number of bodies in the wreckage from an airstrike by the Israeli army on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

“Many Palestinians were martyred in the air strike carried out by the occupation state (Israeli) army on a multi-story building belonging to the Abdulal family located on George Street in the eastern part of Rafah,” according to a statement by the Civil Defense Administration.

It highlighted that teams reached bodies under the rubble and that efforts are underway to reach the missing and injured.

Witnesses also told Anadolu Agency that first aid and civil defense teams had reached the bodies of many, including women and children, in the building that was targeted.

Meanwhile, Palestinian civil defence crews have retrieved 180 bodies from a mass grave inside the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s Khan Younis, two weeks after Israeli forces withdrew from the area on April 7 after military offensive. Wafa News Agency said women and children made up the majority of the victims in the mass grave.

Currently, an estimated 500 persons have been missing in the aftermath of the Israeli invasion of Khan Yunis and the ensuing massacres in the city, while a total of nearly 2,000 have been unaccounted for after the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from several areas of the Strip.

Hamas said the new mass grave in Khan Younis shows the extent of the Israeli atrocities in the Gaza Strip.

“This raises questions about the fate of thousands of Palestinians who are still missing” in Gaza, the group said in a statement.

“The horrific crimes committed by this criminal army and the mass killings of defenseless civilians would not have continued without the unlimited political and military support by the administration of US President Joe Biden,” it added.

There was no comment from the Israeli military on the report.

Meanwhile in the occupied West bank, there were Israeli military raids in the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Saturday.

The “13 martyrs were brought to Tulkarm Governmental Hospital from Nur Shams camp, raising the death toll due to the occupation’s aggression on the city and the camp since Thursday evening to 14,” the Ministry said on Facebook.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Saturday that its teams were able to transfer “9 martyrs from the Nour Shams camp to the hospital,” who are among those announced by the Ministry of Health.

Witnesses confirmed to Anadolu Agency that ambulances were able to enter the camp after the withdrawal of the army late Saturday.

Israeli Army Radio said Thursday that the military had begun implementing a “wide-scale military operation” in the refugee camp, without noting the target or duration of the operation.

Earlier Saturday, Faisal Salama, the head of the services committee in the Nur Shams camp, told Anadolu that the camp is under a “tight and intensified security siege.”

He pointed out the presence of “continuous reinforcements of military vehicles and bulldozers.”

“Young men were killed in their homes in cold blood, and hundreds were detained and interrogated, and dozens were arrested, amidst the continued cut of water, electricity, and communication services,” he added.

Parallel to its onslaught against the Gaza Strip since Oct 7, the Israeli army has escalated raids and arrests in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem.

A Palestinian woman was killed by Israeli army fire at a military checkpoint in the northern West Bank on Sunday, according to local media.

The 40-year-old was shot in an alleged stabbing attempt at the Hamra military checkpoint and succumbed to her injuries, the Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported.

The victim was identified as Manal Faze Sawaftah from the city of Tubas.

At least 485 Palestinians have since 7 October been killed and over 4,900 others injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, West Bank and Jerusalem, according to the Ministry of Health.

At least 50 Palestinians were detained by Israeli army forces in military raids in the occupied West Bank, according to a local nongovernmental organization on Sunday.

All the details were taken into custody during a military raid in the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm in the northern West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a statement.

The new arrests brought to 8,400 Palestinians detained by Israeli forces in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, according to Palestinian figures.

Tensions have been high across the West Bank since Israel launched a deadly military offensive against the Gaza Strip after a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7.

According to Israeli government 1,139 Israelis were killed by Hamas on 7 October in southern Israel and 134 Israelis and foreign nationals are still detained by Hamas in Gaza.

[Photo: Relatives of Palestinian civilians who were killed by Israeli airstrike mourn as they take the dead bodies from the morgue of El-Najar Hospital to be buried in Rafah, Gaza on 21 04 2024. Photojournalist: Abed Rahim Khatib/ AA]