ISRAELI attacks on Gaza have killed at least 84 people, medical sources told Al Jazeera, as indirect ceasefire talks continue in Qatar.
At least 50 people were killed in Israeli attacks on northern Gaza, including in Jabalia refugee camp, since the early hours of Wednesday, according to medical sources.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said almost 50 people were killed around Jabalia and 10 others in the southern city of Khan Younis.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
In Jabalia, rescue workers smashed through collapsed concrete slabs using hand tools, lit only by the light of cellphone cameras, to remove the bodies of some of the children who were killed.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said Israel was carrying out a “systematic and intensifying military aerial campaign”.
“[It’s] primarily targeting residential homes in order to force families to leave these areas and to move to live in makeshift tents, which will facilitate any plans to displace them out of northern Gaza,” he said.
“This has been a very dramatic reality and it underscores the severity of the humanitarian toll that children and displaced families in northern Gaza have been bearing over the course of the past week,” Abu Azzoum added.
The attacks come as an Israeli delegation was in Doha to continue indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas through the mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States, a day after the release of Israeli-American captive Edan Alexander during a short pause in Israel’s bombardment.
On Wednesday, President Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, told Al Jazeera that “great progress” is being made “on all fronts” in the truce talks, both in terms of a ceasefire and the resumption of aid entering the besieged enclave.
Witkoff said, without offering details, that he hopes there will be a positive announcement “soon”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reiterated on Tuesday that Israel would not end its military campaign in Gaza even if a ceasefire deal was reached.
