GAZA CITY: At least 72 Palestinians were killed in relentless Israeli strikes throughout the besieged Gaza Strip, on Saturday, said Gaza’s civil defence agency while quoting hospitals in the territory’s largest urban area.

Israeli army fire killed at least 42 people in Gaza City as it attempts to capture and occupy the territory’s largest urban centre.

In less than two years, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 65,549 people and wounded 167,518, besides displacing millions from their areas.

Footage from a hospital courtyard in central Gaza on Saturday showed several bodies in white shrouds, victims of a strike on Nuseirat refugee camp. Women wept over the dead, while men stood in prayer beside the bodies.

Piles of concrete blocks and gaping holes marked the site of the strike that hit a building in the camp.

Groups of men and children picked through the debris, salvaging what they could of their belongings.

Iyad Shokr, who survived the strike on Nuseirat, said the attack came just before dawn. “The debris collapsed on our floor. By the will of God some survived while others were martyred,” he said.

Seven members of the Bakr family were killed overnight in the strike on Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have stepped up a ground and air assault.

The dead included children and women, according to the Gaza civil defence agency, a rescue force operating under Hamas authority, which said several others were also wounded in the Israeli strike.

“What is happening are massacres, massacres that are condemned internationally,” said Umm Khaleel, who survived when the family home was hit.

Gaza’s main Al-Shifa hospital confirmed receiving six bodies of victims killed in the strike.

“We cannot sleep because of the bombing and shelling on Al-Shati… the children were sleeping when suddenly a missile landed on us,” said Salwa Subhi Bakr.

“What does the world want from us?”.

Bakr, displaced by the nearly two-year-long war, said families had nowhere safe to flee. “They tell us go there, then come back here. Where do we get the money for trucks?” she said. “People are in the streets, in the south scattered everywhere. Where should we go? Find us a solution.”

While Trump is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after on Sept 29 after telling reporters on Friday it “looks like we have a deal on Gaza”, a Hamas official said on Saturday the Palestinian group had not received Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2025