By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dawoud Abu Alkas
CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) – An Israeli military strike killed 12 people in a house in Gaza City early on Saturday, bringing the death toll from attacks across the Gaza Strip to 62 over the last day, while mediators launched a new campaign to stop the attack, Palestinian medics said. fire. In Qatar.
Residents and medics said that at least 14 people were in the Al-Ghoula family's home when the raid occurred in the early hours of the morning, destroying the building.
People searched among the rubble for possible survivors trapped under the rubble, and medics said that among the dead were a number of children. Some flames and smoke trails continued to rise from burning furniture in the rubble hours after the attack.
Ahmed Ayan, a neighbor of the Al-Ghoula family, said: “At around two in the morning (00:00 GMT) we woke up to the sound of a huge explosion,” adding that 14 or 15 people were staying in the house.
Ayyan told Reuters, “Most of them are women and children, all of them are civilians, and there was no one who fired the rockets or from the resistance.”
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army on the incident.
The army said in a statement on Saturday that its forces continued their operations this week in the town of Beit Hanoun at the northern end of the enclave, where the army has been operating for three months, and destroyed a military complex that was being used by the Israeli army. agitation.
Later on Saturday, medics said that an Israeli air strike killed three people in a car east of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Health officials said dozens of Palestinians were killed in raids on Friday, bringing the death toll over the past 24 hours to 62.
The escalation in Israeli operations and the number of Palestinian deaths in recent days comes amid a renewed effort to reach a ceasefire in the 15-month-old war and return Israeli hostages before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
Israeli mediators were sent to resume talks in Doha with Qatari and Egyptian mediation, and the administration of US President Joe Biden, which is helping to mediate the talks, urged Hamas on Friday to agree to an agreement.
Hamas said it was committed to reaching an agreement, but it was not clear how close the two sides were.
Israel launched its attack on Gaza in response to a Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, in which militants stormed border communities from Gaza, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage, according to Israeli statistics.
Its military campaign, aimed at eliminating Hamas, has flattened vast swaths of the Strip, expelling most people from their homes, and killing 45,717 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
