Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip killed at least 34 people on Saturday, according to Palestinian media, as a major hospital in southern Gaza prepared for imminent Israel Defense Forces evacuation orders of Gaza City, ahead of its planned offensive to conquer the metropolis.
The death toll in Gaza was not independently verified and does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Israel has yet to launch its planned major offensive to capture the enclave’s largest city, but according to local aid workers, there has been a marked increase in Israeli bombardments since the beginning of August.
According to the reports, six of the people killed died while waiting for aid in the Zikim area of the northern Gaza Strip; two were killed in a drone strike on a tent in Khan Younis, and one was killed in a drone strike on a house in al-Sabra, south of Gaza City.
According to health officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Israeli strikes killed at least 14 people in southern Gaza, more than half of them women and children. The officials said the strikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis.
Mohamed Saada was among thousands of people who sought food from a delivery in the Zikim area on Saturday, and one of many who left empty-handed.
“I came here to bring food for my children, but couldn’t get anything, due to the huge numbers of people and the difficulty of the situation between the shootings and the trucks running over people,” he said.
A blood-smeared mattress lies on the ground as displaced Palestinians check the damage caused by an Israeli strike in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on August 23, 2025. (AFP)
The IDF has acknowledged firing warning shots at crowds that get too close to its soldiers at aid distribution sites in Gaza, but has called the death tallies exaggerated, though it hasn’t provided alternate numbers.
“The entire Gaza Strip is being bombed … In the south. In the north. Everywhere,” Abu Agala, uncle of two children killed, told The Associated Press.
Another grieving relative, Hekmat Foujo, pleaded for a truce.
“We want to rest,” Foujo said through her tears. ‘’Have some mercy on us.”
The IDF has yet to comment on reported strikes on Saturday.
Palestinians push a wheelchair carrying sacks of flour unloaded from a humanitarian aid convoy on the outskirts of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, August 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Aid group Doctors without Borders, or MSF, said its clinics around Gaza City are seeing high numbers of patients as people flee. Caroline Willemen, MSF project coordinator in the city, noted a marked increase in airstrikes since early August.
“Those who have not moved are wondering what they should do,” she told the AP. “People want to stay; they have been displaced endlessly before, but they also know that at some point, it will become very dangerous to remain.”
Southern hospital preps for evacuees
Palestinians on Saturday began to clean up and renovate the European Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, as part of preparations for the evacuation of Gaza City ahead of the IDF’s planned offensive in the area.
The planned campaign has sparked a major international outcry, with governments and humanitarian groups warning of potentially disastrous consequences for Gaza’s civilians, noting widespread malnutrition that has recently worsened significantly amid the 22-month war.
Earlier this week, the IDF said that the European Hospital, which was closed after the military raided and sealed a Hamas tunnel running underneath it, was slated to resume operations to accommodate the expected influx of people fleeing northern Gaza.
مشاهد من داخل المستشفى الأوروبي بخان يونس بعد سماح جيش الاحتلال الإسرائيلي للفرق الفنية بإعادة تشغيله pic.twitter.com/N5zWE7nuMU
— وكالة سند للأنباء – Snd News Agency (@Snd_pal) August 23, 2025
On Thursday, Israeli authorities warned medical facilities and international organizations in the northern Gaza Strip to gear up for mass evacuation.
According to the IDF, Gazan medical officials were told that “the hospital infrastructures in the southern Gaza Strip are being adapted for the absorption of the sick and wounded, alongside an increased entry of necessary medical equipment in accordance with the requests of the international aid organizations.”
A security official said the UN and international aid groups were formulating a plan to restart the hospital “as an additional medical response” for the estimated one million Palestinians who are set to be displaced from Gaza City when the IDF launches its offensive there. The military also warned medical officials in northern Gaza to prepare to move their equipment to hospitals in the Strip’s south.
Footage published by Palestinian media on Friday showed medical staff cleaning up the hospital, as well as an excavator at work in the compound, after the IDF allowed them to enter the area.
On May 13, Hamas’s then-leader in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar, and other top commanders in the terror group were killed in an airstrike on a tunnel running underneath the hospital. The military raided the medical facility in June, capturing their bodies and sealing the tunnel underneath it with concrete.
Sinwar, a senior Hamas military commander, was the younger brother of the former Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who was also killed by the IDF during the ongoing war.
الطواقم الطبية تعمل بجد لتهيئة المستشفى الأوروبي جنوب شرق مدينة خانيونس للعمل مجددا pic.twitter.com/EW59PCq0nQ
— القسطل الإخباري (@AlQastalps) August 22, 2025
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 459.
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