Just as Palestinians in Gaza were reinvigorated with a sense of hope Wednesday after news of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, deadly Israeli airstrikes rained down on people, turning celebration into anguish.
Families wept as they saw their loved ones’ bodies wrapped in white shrouds and carried out in Khan Younis outside Nasser Hospital Friday — their names written in blue ink in Arabic, on each one.
Jomaa Abdel-Aal said two of his nephews — Mohammed Asaad Jarghoun, 28, and Mohammed Mahmoud Jarghoun, 27 — were killed in a tent in the centre of Khan Younis around 2 a.m. on Friday.
“Every day we bid farewell to the martyrs. We have gotten used to saying goodbye to our loved ones,” Abdel-Aal told CBC News videographer Mohamed El Saife Friday.
“May God reunite us with them in [the afterlife],” he said. “Life has become an unbearable hell.”
Other mourners gathered to pray over those killed as women cried, clinging onto one another.
At least 117 people killed since Wednesday
On Friday, the Israeli security cabinet recommended approving the Gaza ceasefire and hostage return deal, ahead of a full cabinet meeting that would give final ratification to the agreement that is set to officially take effect Sunday.
As final details were still being formalized, Israeli warplanes kept up intense strikes across the Gaza Strip in the days following Wednesday’s announcement.
At least 117 Palestinians, including 32 women and 30 children, have been killed since then and 266 others have been injured, according to the Palestine Civil Defence in Gaza.
Palestinians gathered Friday at Nasser Hospital near Khan Younis in southern Gaza to pray over the bodies of their loved ones killed in Israeli airstrikes just days away from when a ceasefire is expected to take effect.
Abdel Aal, who lost two children to airstrikes in the 15-month war, said he is not hopeful for an end to the killings in Gaza.
“The Palestinian people have not been able to take delight even just for a moment in the past 75 years while the death and destruction has taken place in these countries,” he said.
There was no comment from the Israeli military on the latest strikes.
Journalist killed in designated humanitarian zone
Earlier this week, merely hours after Palestinians took to the streets to celebrate news of a deal reached Wednesday, Ismail Al-Shiah’s brother, Ahmed Al-Shiah — a journalist in Gaza — was killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a charity soup kitchen in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. The area has been designated as a humanitarian safe zone.
“He was passing out food to orphans, and he was working with [the] charity,” Al-Shiah told CBC News Thursday.
“This is a loss for Palestine and a loss for the country.”
In a video circulated widely online, a young Palestinian man is seen crouched over the body of his sister who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on a home in central Gaza City early on Thursday.
“Hala, get up, the war is over, we can go to the south,” he says as he shakes the girl’s body. “Hala, we can leave Gaza and travel outside the country, get up!”
Hope quickly turns to anguish
Saeed Awad, a paramedic in Gaza, said Israeli bombing has especially increased since Wednesday in central and northern Gaza.
“All this of course ruin’s people’s happiness,” Awad told CBC News Thursday. “And it affects the happiness that was there [Wednesday].”
Awad said there was a strike in Ard al Mufti in central Gaza Thursday, but the Palestine Civil Defence and ambulances were unable to reach the area.
“The house was on fire and no one could get to it.”
Israel’s acceptance of the ceasefire deal with Hamas will not be official until it is approved by the country’s security cabinet and government. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has delayed the vote, accusing Hamas of making last-minute demands and going back on agreements.
Tamer Abu Shaaban’s voice cracked as he stood over the tiny body of his young niece wrapped in a white shroud on the tile floor of a Gaza City morgue Thursday. She had been hit in the back with shrapnel from a missile as she played in the yard of a school where the family was sheltering, he said.
“Is this the truce they are talking about? What did this young girl, this child, do to deserve this? What did she do to deserve this? Is she fighting you, Israel?” he asked.
The ceasefire accord emerged on Wednesday after mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. The deal outlines a six-week initial ceasefire with the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces, as well as the release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
If successful, the ceasefire would halt fighting between Hamas and Israeli forces that has razed much of Gaza and killed more than 46,800 people, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry there. It does not say how many of the dead were militants.
Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel in a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, including several Canadian citizens, and abducting around 250.
Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, and the Israeli military believes around a third and up to half of those are dead.
