9 of a Gaza doctor’s 10 children are killed in Israeli strikes

CAIRO — Pediatrician Alaa Najjar was on duty at Nasser Hospital when she learned that her home had been hit by an Israeli airstrike.

She ran home to discover the house on fire — and that nine of her 10 children had been killed. Her husband was severely wounded and their only surviving child, an 11-year-old son, was in critical condition after Friday’s strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, said Ahmar al-Farra, head of the hospital’s pediatric department.

The children were among 79 people killed by Israeli strikes who have been brought to hospitals in the last 24 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday — a toll that doesn’t include hospitals in the battered north that it said are now inaccessible.

Najjar’s dead children ranged in age from 7 months to 12 years old. Khalil Al-Dokran, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Health Ministry, told the AP that two of the children remained under the rubble.

Israel’s military said in a statement that it struck suspects operating from a structure next to its forces and described the area of Khan Yunis as a “dangerous war zone.” It said it had evacuated civilians from the area, and “the claim regarding harm to uninvolved civilians is under review.”

Earlier Saturday, a statement said Israel’s air force struck more than 100 targets throughout Gaza over the last day.

The Health Ministry said the new deaths brought the war’s toll to 53,901 since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel by Hamas-led militants that sparked 19 months of fighting. The ministry said 3,747 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel resumed the war on March 18 in an effort to pressure the militant group Hamas to accept different ceasefire terms. Its count doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Israel’s pressure on Hamas has included a blockade of Gaza and its more than 2 million people since early March. This week, a few aid trucks entered the territory and began reaching Palestinians for the first time since the blockade began.

COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing aid for Gaza, said 388 trucks had entered since Monday. About 600 trucks a day had entered during the ceasefire.

Warnings of famine by food security experts, and images of desperate Palestinians jostling for bowls of food at the ever-shrinking number of charity kitchens, led Israel’s allies to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow some aid to return.

Netanyahu’s government has sought a new aid delivery and distribution system by a newly established U.S.-backed group, but the United Nations and partners have rejected it, saying it allows Israel to use food as a weapon and violates humanitarian principles.

Israel may now be changing its approach to let aid groups remain in charge of nonfood assistance, according to a letter obtained by the AP. Israel accuses Hamas of siphoning off aid, but the U.N. and aid groups deny there is significant diversion.

Hospitals in Gaza are again reporting attacks and other Israeli pressure.

The Health Ministry said 11 security personnel have been trapped at the European Hospital in southern Gaza after heavy gunfire and airstrikes since at least Tuesday. Dr. Saleh Hams, director of the nursing department, said patients were evacuated after an Israeli strike May 13. Hams said the security staff stayed behind to protect from looting, and that it was the only hospital in Gaza offering neurosurgery, cardiac care and cancer treatment.

Israel said it will continue to strike Gaza until Hamas releases all of the 58 remaining hostages and disarms. Fewer than half of the hostages are believed to be alive since the Oct. 7 attack, in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 others.

Hamas has said it will return the remaining hostages only in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from the territory. Netanyahu has rejected those terms and has vowed to maintain control over Gaza and facilitate what he refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of its Palestinian population.

“The Israeli government and its leader have a clear choice: deal or war, saving lives or abandonment,” Liran Berman, brother of hostages Gali and Ziv Berman, said at a weekly rally Saturday in Tel Aviv as families and supporters again demanded an agreement that would bring everyone home.

Aljoud and Magdy write for the Associated Press and reported from Beirut and Cairo, respectively.