Palestinian media on Wednesday evening reported fresh strikes on the Khan Younis hospital where the IDF targeted Hamas leader Muhammad Sinwar in a massive strike the day before.
After the original strikes on Tuesday targeted an underground command compound below the European Hospital where Sinwar was reportedly sheltering, the IDF has since bombed the area at least twice, in an apparent attempt to prevent anyone from approaching the tunnel beneath the medical center.
One strike on Wednesday near the hospital hit a bulldozer, according to Palestinian media, wounding several people.
Another strike later Wednesday hit the same area.
The military has not commented on the additional strikes on the hospital.
The IDF has not yet confirmed whether Sinwar, the younger brother of former Hamas leader and October 7 terror mastermind Yahya Sinwar, was killed in the strike, and is also looking into the possibility that other senior Hamas officials were with him.
Channel 12 reported that several other top Hamas commanders may have been in the bunker with Sinwar, including Hamas military wing spokesman Hudhaifa Kahlout, known by the nom de guerre “Abu Obeida.�
Abu Obeida has been one of the most visible and best-known Hamas leaders despite always appearing with his head wrapped in a red keffiyeh.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip since Wednesday morning killed over 100 people, according to tallies from the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry and civil defense agency, with at least 34 people reportedly killed in IDF strikes on Thursday morning alone. The figures could not be verified and do not differentiate between civilians and terror operatives.
Hamas civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP on Thursday morning that at least 13 people were “recovered from rubble� after a strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, while another 20 were killed in five strikes across the Gaza Strip, and one woman was killed in artillery shelling in southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, a separate civil defense official, Mohammed al-Mughayyir, told AFP 80 people had been killed by Israeli strikes on Wednesday, including 59 in the north.
At least 50 people, including 22 children, were killed in strikes around northern Gaza’s Jabalia alone, according to hospitals and Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
AFP footage from the aftermath of a strike in Jabalia showed mounds of rubble and twisted metal from collapsed buildings. Palestinians, including young children, picked through the debris in search of belongings.
Footage of mourners in northern Gaza showed women in tears as they kneeled next to bodies wrapped in bloodstained white shrouds.
“It’s a nine-month-old baby. What did he do?” one of them cried out.
Hasan Moqbel, a Palestinian who lost relatives, told AFP: “Those who don’t die from airstrikes die from hunger, and those who don’t die from hunger die from lack of medicine.”
The IDF on Wednesday had urged residents in part of a Gaza City neighborhood to evacuate, warning that its forces would “attack the area with intense force.”
The areas threatened by the evacuation warnings included several schools and the al-Shifa hospital, the Strip’s largest, according to a map published by the IDF.
Witnesses and medics said shortly after the evacuation orders Israeli planes carried several airstrikes against targets within Gaza City.
The IDF had no immediate comment, and said it was trying to verify the reports.
The war in Gaza began with the Hamas assault on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
Over 52,000 people have since been killed in the Strip, according to the Hamas health ministry’s unverifiable tally, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.