Israeli airstrikes kill 40 people overnight at two locations in central Gaza, hospitals say

CNN:

Hospitals in central Gaza have reported that 40 people were killed in two Israeli airstrikes overnight within a few hundred meters of each other.

Al Aqsa hospital said it had received 29 bodies from one strike, nine of whom were children, while Al Awda hospital said it had received 11 bodies after the second strike.

The strikes occurred at about 1 a.m. and 2:45 a.m. on Tuesday morning local time (6 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. Monday ET), according to witnesses.

Rescue workers have continued efforts to find bodies underneath the rubble of a four-story building in Nuseirat that was demolished in the first strike. Witnesses said dozens of people had been sheltering in the building’s yard.

CNN video showed those injured and killed being brought into Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, while other video shows the bodies of several children being retrieved from the wreckage.

Desperate family members surround the piles of rubble, waiting to see if anyone is rescued alive, the footage showed. But the workers at the scene clearly lack equipment to remove the concrete.

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the two strikes.

Some of those killed had recently arrived from Rafah, according to people at the scene.

One witness, Ashraf Al Jalees, told CNN at the site: “I swear these are innocent civilians …They are all buried under the ground, including children. There are seven girls here. What fault did they have?”

He said he had set up a tent for a friend – Hassan Obeid – whom he said had “no affiliation with Hamas or anyone else.”