Gazans mourn at dawn after night of intense Israeli strikes
A picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke billowing above destroyed buildings during Israeli bombardment in the besieged Palestinian territory on May 21, 2025. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories — A rooster crowed and women wailed as the sun rose on Wednesday above a Gaza hospital where first responders hurriedly unloaded bags holding the bodies of those killed by Israeli strikes throughout the night.
Some of the bodies were wrapped in blankets and unloaded from civilian cars at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Yunis city.
Among the dead was Aysal Abu Salah, just one and a half years old, according to the hospital. Rescuers said at least 12 other people were killed in the strike.
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Abu Salah’s body was covered in the blue and black dust that sometimes sticks to the skin of victims of air strikes.
Nearby, men dropped bags marked “United Nations” that contained body parts recovered from the site of the same strike, a house in the farming area of Abasan al-Kabira near Khan Yunis.
The Israeli military had ordered the area’s evacuation Monday, warning of strikes and fighting to come.
Contacted by AFP, the military did not comment on the overnight strike.
Israel stepped up its offensive in Gaza last week, vowing to defeat Hamas militants whose October 7, 2023 attack triggered the war.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said that more than 20 air strikes hit Khan Yunis and its surroundings overnight, with the targets including encampments for Palestinians displaced by the war, now in its 20th month.
AFPTV footage of southern Gaza from the Israeli side showed multiple strikes on Wednesday morning.
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First responders have reported dozens of deaths daily since Israel intensified its attacks in the coastal territory, home to 2.4 million Palestinians.
Every morning, the civil defence agency has provided death tolls for overnight air strikes that often hit houses in rural areas or apartment buildings in the formerly densely populated north.
Feriel Abu Salah, who said she lost a sister in the strike on Abasan al-Kabira, nearly collapsed at the hospital’s entrance.
“Oh, how I suffer”, she told AFP, her face awash with tears.
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She wailed in grief among a crowd of women and children outside the morgue.“Seven children died!” one of them said.
“Enough, enough!” she added, holding her head in her hands and looking up.
In the hospital room where the Abu Salah family’s bodies were laid in a row, a man shook as he stifled sobs.
As he almost fell, other men held him tightly, and he let out a wail.
The Abu Salah family members killed overnight are among the 53,655 people the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says have died in the Palestinian territory since the start of the war.
According to the ministry, at least 3,509 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes on March 18, following a breakdown in ceasefire negotiations.
Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
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