People check the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 21, 2023. (Photo by Mohammed Abed / AFP)
Rafah, Palestinian Territories: Scores of Palestinians were killed in central Gaza on Sunday after Israel stepped up its strikes on the war-torn enclave, while another convoy of 17 aid trucks arrived.
According to Gaza's health ministry officials, the central town of Deir al-Balah had been particularly badly hit overnight.
At the hospital morgue, an AFP journalist saw the bodies of many children on the bloodied floor, where distraught families wept as they identified the victims.
Among them was a man clutching his dead toddler and a young boy who pulled back a blanket over his little sister's body.
"My cousin was sleeping in his house with his daughter in his arms. He was a man with no record, nothing to do with the resistance," said Wael Wafi, gazing at the body of his cousin, his arm still wrapped around his three-year-old daughter Misk.
Also Sunday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that 29 of its staff had been killed since the start of the war in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying half of them were teachers. On Saturday it had given a toll of 17.
The scale of the bombing has left basic systems unable to function, with the UN saying dozens of unidentified bodies had been buried in a mass grave in Gaza City because cold storage had run out.
Meanwhile, a second convoy of 17 trucks of aid entered Gaza from Egypt on Sunday following an initial delivery of 20 trucks on Saturday after intensive negotiations and US pressure.
Separately, an AFP journalist saw six trucks leaving Rafah after filling up from dwindling fuel stocks held at the crossing as the enclave faces catastrophic shortages after Israel cut off supplies of food, water, fuel and electricity, although it later resumed water supplies to the south on October 15.
Although Egyptian media said another 40 trucks would enter Gaza on Monday, the UN says the enclave needs 100 trucks per day to meet the needs of Gaza's 2.4 million residents.
"Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and.. aid will not reach many civilians in desperate need," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said.
