Emergency workers collect bodies in Gaza City

Dozens of bodies collected throughout a western neighborhood of Gaza City arrived at Al-Ahli Hospital on Friday morning as Palestinian emergency workers said they continued to unearth the dead throughout the neighborhood’s destroyed streets and buildings.

The hospital’s director, Fadel Naem, told The Associated Press that people both dead and wounded had been brought to the hospital from the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, transported in groups of up to 10, amid sniper fire and the buzz of helicopters.

Meanwhile, emergency crews from the civil defense were continuing to recover bodies scattered in destroyed streets and buildings, where entire families appear to have been killed by artillery fire and aerial bombardment, Mahmoud Basal, the group’s spokesperson said.

The Israeli army said it could not comment on its activities in the area.

“There are homes that we cannot reach, and there are those who were burned inside their homes,” Basal said, noting many of those who were killed had left nearby shelters after being ordered to evacuate.

In recent months, Israel has intensified operations in various neighborhoods of Gaza City, including the Shati refugee camp and Shujaiya, and has issued multiple evacuation orders in the north of the territory.

The scenes in Tal al-Hawa mirror those in other Gaza City neighborhoods from which Israel’s military has withdrawn in recent days. On Thursday, civil defense workers found 60 bodies in Shujaiya under similar circumstances, with more believed to be buried under rubble.