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Children among 38 killed in Israeli strikes

Say Gaza rescuers; Hamas delegation in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials on ceasefire
AGENCIES
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes yesterday hit two homes at dawn in Khan Yunis, the territory’s main southern city, killing at least 38 people including children.
Fourteen people were killed in a strike that hit the home of the Al-Fara family, and a separate air raid killed another six, according to agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
Bassal said the 14 included nine children under the age of 16.
AFP photographs showed relatives at the European hospital in Khan Yunis mourning the deaths of children, the bodies of several of them wrapped in white shrouds.
The military, in a statement giving an operational update, said that “a number of terrorists were eliminated from the air and ground” in southern Gaza.
While Israeli forces continue to operate across Gaza, recent weeks have seen an intensified air and ground assault in the territory’s north, where the military reports Hamas members are regrouping, reports AFP.
A Hamas official confirmed to Reuters yesterday that a delegation led by the group’s chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya arrived in Cairo on Thursday for talks with Egyptian officials to discuss “ways to end the Israeli aggression on Gaza”.
Meanwhile, United Nations agencies said yesterday children in Gaza are dying in pain for want of emergency treatment as a result of Israeli authorities approving fewer and fewer of them for medical evacuation following the closure of the Rafah crossing.
Whereas before, almost 300 children were being evacuated a month, that number had now declined to less than one per day, with authorities waiting in vain for security approvals from Israeli authorities controlling exits from Gaza, Unicef’s James Elder told a United Nations briefing in Geneva.
“As a result, children in Gaza are dying, not just from the bombs and the bullets and the shells that strike them,” he said.
“Even when miracles happen, even when the bombs go off and the homes collapse and the casualties mount but the child survives, they are then prevented from leaving Gaza for the urgent medical care that can save their lives.”
Israeli authorities did not say when an application for a medical evacuation had been declined, and no explanation was given for any decision taken, reports Reuters.
COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian issues including medical evacuations from Gaza, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the question of evacuations generally or the specific cases cited by Unicef.
Among the cases described by Elder was that of Mazunia, a 12-year-old girl whose face had been blown off in a rocket strike that killed both her siblings. A medevac, needed to save her life, had repeatedly been denied, despite an offer to send her without her mother.
“This is a 12-year-old girl,” Elder asid. “Now, I met Mazunia. She’s incredibly brave, but of course she is in immense pain and her condition is worsening.”