Dozens of bodies have been recovered from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip following the Israeli withdrawal from the area, according to Palestinian reports.
A spokesman for the civil defence, which is controlled by Palestinian militant organization Hamas, said on Tuesday that 42 bodies had been found in Bani Suhaila in the east of Khan Younis.
The media office, which is also controlled by Hamas, announced that 255 people had been killed and around 300 others injured within eight days. There are also missing persons. It did not say how many were Hamas fighters and how many were civilians.
The information cannot be independently verified.
The Israeli army previously announced that it had withdrawn from the area just over a week after the start of a new military operation in Khan Younis.
Within a week, the soldiers had “eliminated over 150 terrorists, dismantled terror tunnels, weapons storage facilities, and terrorist infrastructure, and located weapons,” the army said.
The offensive began a week ago after, according to Israel, Hamas fighters had reorganized themselves in the city. The operation was also aimed at recovering the bodies of five Israeli hostages, which it did.
Thousands of civilians once again fled the urban area. The Israeli military had been active against Hamas combat units in the city previously on several occasions and over longer periods. It had then withdrawn to fixed positions outside the city.
The army also announced that the air force had killed a Hamas member who had been responsible for anti-tank missiles in the Hamas battalion in Nuseirat, in the central part of Gaza.
He was behind numerous attacks on Israeli troops and had been a “central source of knowledge on anti-tank missiles for Hamas,” the army said.
Separately, the World Health Organization (WHO), said a polio vaccination campaign is needed in the Gaza, but a ceasefire is required for this to happen.
The virus responsible for causing polio has been discovered in sewage samples from the coastal territory. There is therefore a very high probability that the pathogen is present in the population, said WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier in Geneva.
Experience has shown that around 70% of people with polio are asymptomatic, he said, adding that there does not appear to be a polio outbreak in Gaza currently.
But the WHO spokesman stressed the need for preparation and an immunization campaign – “and for that we need a ceasfire.”
On July 23, the Israeli military said it had started to vaccinate its forces against polio, as well as transporting vaccines to the territory. It said 300,000 doses have been delivered since October 7, when the war started after Hamas and others attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage.
The Hamas-controlled health authority in Gaza has estimated that more than 39,000 people have been killed and more than 90,000 injured since the beginning of the conflict.
Meanwhile, in Israel, the country’s military prosecutor filed charges against a soldier for allegedly mistreating Palestinian prisoners.
The soldier is accused of using “severe violence against the detainees he was entrusted with guarding,” the Israeli army said.
The actions are alleged to have taken place between February and June of this year, it said.
The army said that the reservist had assaulted the prisoners during some of the transports, even though they posed no danger and were handcuffed and blindfolded.
He is accused of beating the prisoners with a club and his rifle, while filming the incident with his phone.
On Monday, nine soldiers at the Sde Teiman military base near the desert city of Beersheba were detained by police on charges of sexually abusing a Palestinian prisoner. The prisoner was reportedly hospitalized.
The Sde Teiman prisoner camp houses fighters from an elite Hamas unit. Thousands of Palestinians are being held in Israeli detention facilities.
The human rights organization Amnesty International recently accused Israel of mistreating and torturing Palestinian prisoners from Gaza.
