ANOTHER barrage of Israeli air strikes killed at least three dozen Palestinians in southern Gaza, health workers said on Saturday.

This came as officials including a Hamas delegation gathered for high-level ceasefire talks in neighbouring Egypt.

Eleven members of a family, including two children, were among the dead after an air strike hit their home in Khan Younis, according to Nasser hospital, which received a total of 33 bodies from three strikes in and around the city that also hit tuk-tuks and passers by. 

Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said that it received three bodies from another strike.

First responders also recovered 16 bodies from the Hamad City area of Khan Younis after a partial pull out of Israeli forces, 10 bodies from a residential building west of Khan Younis and two farther south in Rafah. 

The circumstances of their deaths weren’t immediately clear, but the areas were repeatedly bombed by the Israeli military over the past week. 

Some residents returned to Hamad City, crunching on rubble as they walked between destroyed apartment buildings. One multistorey building’s entire wall was gone.

“There is nothing, no apartment, no furniture, no homes, only destruction,” Neveen Kheder said. “We are dying slowly. You know what, if they gave a mercy bullet, it would be better than what is happening to us.”

Meanwhile in Egypt, the United States delegation led by CIA director William Burns and White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk held talks with senior Egyptian officials and then with Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

The Egyptian and Qatari negotiators were expected to meet with Hamas officials on Saturday evening. Hamas was not expected to take part directly in today’s talks but will be briefed by Egypt and Qatar.

Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawy said that Hamas’s position hadn’t changed from accepting an earlier draft that would include the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

An Israeli delegation arrived in Egypt last Thursday, but the country’s far-right Israeli coalition government continues to face major protests at home and abroad calling for a ceasefire in the fighting in Gaza.

In the latest protest in Tel Aviv on Saturday, some Israelis again expressed anger with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they pressed for a deal to bring home the hostages taken by Hamas during its October 7 attack.

“Remove him from his position and appoint a person who is able to return them,” said Ayala Metzger, daughter-in-law of Yoram Metzger, whose body was recovered in Gaza last week.