At least 29 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential area of ​​Rafah in southern Gaza, while a hospital was attacked in northern Gaza and 10 people were killed in an attack on a refugee camp in that part of the enclave.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have crowded into Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border to avoid Israeli bombardments further north, although they fear they will not be safe there either.

“Three residential buildings in one area were destroyed in the attack,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah, said on Tuesday.

The number of victims is expected to rise as more bodies are pulled from the rubble, with people also trapped under it, he said.

Journalist Adel Zoroub was among the 29 people killed in the Rafah airstrike, the government media office in Gaza said on its Telegram channel.

Separately, an Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 10 Palestinians and injured many more, a health ministry spokesman in the enclave said.

Fierce fighting raged in the north of the Gaza Strip, where Hamas continues to mount fierce resistance in what is now a devastated wasteland, seven weeks after Israeli tanks and troops moved in.

Raids on hospitals

Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said on Tuesday that Israeli forces had converted Al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza into a barracks after detaining more than 240 people.

Those held included “80 hospital staff, 40 patients and 120 displaced people in the hospital,” he said.

According to al-Qudra, they arrested six hospital employees, including the facility’s director, Ahmed Muhanna.

According to the church that runs the hospital, Israeli forces also raided the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City overnight and into Tuesday, destroying a wall at the main entrance and arresting most of the staff.

Don Binder, a priest at St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in occupied East Jerusalem, which runs the hospital, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that the raid left only two doctors, four nurses and two janitors, to seriously care for more than 100 wounded patients without running water or electricity.

“It was a great mercy for the many injured in Gaza City that we were able to keep our Ahli Anglican Hospital open for so long,” Binder wrote in a Facebook post late Monday. “That ends today.”

He said an Israeli tank was parked on the rubble at the entrance to the hospital and prevented anyone from entering or leaving the hospital.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which remained Aim and ambush Health facilities in the enclave.

A World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Monday that the Kamal Adwan Hospital was in northern Gaza Israeli troops attacked last week it stopped working and patients, including babies, were evacuated.

“We cannot afford to lose hospitals,” said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for Gaza.

Peeperkorn also said that about 4,000 displaced people seeking refuge at the Nasser Medical Complex compound in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, were in danger because Israel was conducting military operations there.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday that more than 19,453 Palestinians were killed and 52,286 injured in the Israeli attack on the Hamas-ruled enclave two months of war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to achieve a complete victory over Hamas, whose militants killed about 1,140 people and captured 240 people in a surprise raid on Israel on October 7, according to Israeli figures.

Israel increased retaliation against Hamas has caused outrage among many governments and international organizations over the number of civilian deaths, hunger and homelessness.

“Clear progress” in the talks

Meanwhile, talks on a further ceasefire between the sides continue with Qatar-led mediation efforts amid repeated calls from the international community for an end to hostilities.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said there was “clear progress” towards a possible new one Hostage swap deal between Israel and Hamas after Bill Burns, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, flew to Warsaw for negotiations with David Barnea, the head of the Israeli secret service Mossad, and Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.

However, with Israel looking at mid-January as the timeline for the “next phase of the war,” there is a possibility that Hamas will decide to “just wait” until then “to see how things develop,” Fisher said.

Hamas could wait until then “to give up the prisoners and use them as bargaining chips when things actually start to change on the ground,” he added.

Israel’s Channel 12 television reported that Israeli negotiators now face the challenge of convincing the head of Hamas in Gaza to agree to a deal that does not include a ceasefire.

Israel believes that Hamas’s decision Publish videos of Israeli prisoners The aim is to advance negotiations, Channel 12 also quoted a source.

On Monday, Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, released a one-minute video in which three elderly Israeli prisoners pleaded for their immediate release.