By WAFAA SHURAFA, KAREEM CHEHAYEB, and MELANIE LIDMAN
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes killed at least 40 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including 10 members of a family sheltering in a tent, hospital officials said Wednesday. The strikes came as U.S. President Donald Trump pushed for a ceasefire that might end the war and free dozens of Israeli hostages.
Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the second time in two days at the White House on Tuesday evening, but there was no sign of a breakthrough.
Netanyahu has vowed to continue the 21-month war until Hamas is destroyed, while the group has said it will only release the remaining hostages in return for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.
Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis said the dead included 17 women and 10 children. The war has gutted Gaza’s health system, with several hospitals taken out of service and leading physicians killed in Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military said it had struck more than 100 targets across Gaza over the past day, including fighters, booby-trapped structures, weapons storage facilities, missile launchers and tunnels. Israel accuses Hamas of hiding weapons and fighters among civilians.
‘I found all my children dead’
On Wednesday, crowds of people bid farewell to the 10 members of the Shaaban family killed in an Israeli strike while they were inside their tent in the southern city of Khan Younis.
“I found all my children dead, and my daughters’ three children dead,” said Um Mohammad Shaaban, a nickname that means Mohammad Shaaban’s mother. “It’s supposed to be a safe area where we were.”
She said that strikes have intensified even as hope for a ceasefire has risen. “The hospital last night was jam-packed,” she said.
As she wept over the bodies of her three grandchildren, others holding the bodies struggled to let go before they were sent to burial.
Palestinians are struggling to secure food and water
Palestinians are desperate for an end to the war that has killed tens of thousands, destroyed vast areas and displaced around 90% of the territory’s population.
Aid groups say Israeli restrictions and the breakdown of law and order have made it extremely difficult to deliver humanitarian assistance, leading to widespread hunger and fears of famine.
In the sprawling coastal Muwasi area, where hundreds of thousands of people live in tents after being displaced from their homes, Abeer al-Najjar said she had struggled during the constant bombardments to get food and water for her family.
“I pray to God that there would be a pause, and not just a pause where they would lie to us,” she said, referring to an earlier ceasefire that Israel ended in March. “We want a full ceasefire.”
Her husband, Ali al-Najjar, said life has been especially tough in the summer, with little access to drinking water. “We hope this would be the end of our suffering and we can rebuild our country again,” he said, before running through a crowd with two buckets to fill them from a water truck.
People chased the vehicle as it drove away to another location.
Amani Abu-Omar said the water truck comes every four days, not enough for her dehydrated children. She said the summer heat and harsh conditions had caused skin rashes.
“We had expected ceasefires on many occasions, but it was for nothing,” she said.
The war started after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. Most of the hostages have been released in earlier ceasefires. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The ministry, which is under Gaza’s Hamas-run government, doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. The U.N. and other international organizations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.
Netanyahu and Trump meet again
Netanyahu told reporters Tuesday that he and Trump see “eye to eye” on the need to destroy Hamas. He added that the cooperation and coordination between Israel and the U.S. is currently the best it has been during Israel’s 77-year-history.
Later this week, Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, is expected to head to the Qatari capital of Doha to continue indirect negotiations with Hamas on the ceasefire proposal.
Witkoff said late Tuesday that three key areas of disagreement had been resolved, but that one key issue still remained. He did not elaborate.
After the second meeting, Netanyahu said he and Trump also discussed the “great victory” over Iran from Israeli and American strikes during the 12-day war that ended two weeks ago.
“Opportunities have been opened here for expanding the circle of peace, for expanding the Abraham Accords,” said Netanyahu, referring to normalization agreements between Israel and multiple Arab nations that were brokered by Trump in his first term. Washington has been pushing for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Chehayeb reported from Beirut, and Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.