At least 13 people have been killed in a series of Israeli airstrikes on refugee camps in central Gaza, Palestinian health officials say. The strikes, which occurred overnight into Saturday, come as efforts to secure a ceasefire in the region continue in Cairo.
Among the dead in Nuseirat Refugee Camp and Bureij Refugee Camp were three children and one woman, according to Palestinian ambulance teams that transported the bodies to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital.
Earlier, a medical team delivered a live baby from a Palestinian woman killed in an airstrike that hit her home in Nuseirat late Thursday evening.
Ola al-Kurd, 25, was killed along with six others in the blast, but was quickly rushed by emergency workers to Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza in the hope of saving the unborn child. Hours later, doctors told The Associated Press that a baby boy had been delivered.
The still-unnamed newborn is stable but has suffered from a shortage of oxygen and has been placed in an incubator, said Dr. Khalil Dajran on Friday.
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Ola's “husband and a relative survived yesterday's strike, while everyone else died,” Majid al-Kurd, the deceased woman's cousin, told the AP on Saturday.
"The baby is in good health based on what doctors said,” he added.
Israel’s war on Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas' October 7 attack, has killed more than 38,900 people, according to the territory's Health Ministry. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.
Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Talks
On Friday, the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel that will release Israeli hostages captive by the group in Gaza is “inside the 10-yard line”, but added "we know that anything in the last 10 yards are the hardest”.
Fruitless stop-and-start negotiations between the warring sides have been underway since November's one-week cease-fire, with both Hamas and Israel repeatedly accusing each other of scuppering the effort to reach a deal.
Meanwhile, the United Nations' International Court of Justice in The Hague issued a non-binding opinion that Israel's presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful, saying Israel could not claim sovereignty in the territories and was impeding Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
The court called for an end to settlement construction and asked that existing settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem be removed.
(With AP Inputs)
