GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said that Israeli strikes on Tuesday killed at least 28 people in the area surrounding the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, where the Israeli military said it hit a Hamas “command and control center.”

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “according to our crews on the ground, 28 martyrs have been recovered from the area” surrounding the hospital in the south of the Palestinian territory.

Ahmad Radwan, civil defense media officer in the southern Gaza Strip, had previously put the initial toll at seven dead and 30 injured “following the occupation’s bombing of the vicinity and courtyard of the European Hospital.”

The Israeli military said in a statement that they had struck “Hamas terrorists in a command and control center located in an underground terrorist infrastructure site beneath the European hospital in Khan Yunis.”

“The Hamas terrorist organization continues to use hospitals in the Gaza Strip for terrorist activity, demonstrating its cynical and brutal use of the civilian population in the hospital and its surroundings,” it added.

“It was an utterly catastrophic scene,” Amro Tabash, a local photojournalist, told AFP.

“Everyone inside the hospital — patients and wounded alike — was running in fear, some on crutches, others screaming for their children, while others were being dragged on beds,” he said.

Earlier in the day, the Israeli military said it had struck Hamas militants “operating from within a command and control center” at Nasser Hospital, also in Khan Yunis.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the strike killed two people and wounded several others.

Bassal said that “the Israeli army bombed the surgery building at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis at dawn on Tuesday, killing journalist Hassan Aslih.”

The Israeli military had previously accused Aslih of participating in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.

Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18 after a two-month truce in its war against Hamas, which was triggered by the Palestinian group’s 2023 attack.

LONDON: Seventeen Palestinian children and their families crossed the King Hussein Bridge on Tuesday on their way back to the Gaza Strip after receiving medical treatment at hospitals in Jordan.

Their care was provided as part of the country’s “Medical Corridor” initiative, which provides urgent medical aid for people from the coastal territory in coordination with the Jordanian Armed Forces, the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. The children were part of the first group of evacuees brought from Gaza on March 4.

All 17 fully recovered after receiving specialized medical care, the Jordan News Agency reported. Twelve others are still being treated in Jordanian hospitals.

More than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed during the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which began in October 2023. According to a UNICEF report, about 15,000 children have died during the conflict, more than 34,000 have been injured, and nearly 1 million displaced.

The Medical Corridor is one of several Jordanian initiatives that aim to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Others include the deployment of field hospitals, humanitarian convoys carrying medical and food aid, a mobile bakery, and the evacuations of children and the wounded.