Airstrikes kill 74, wipe out families
Palestinian prisoners, including top militants. Netanyahu has rejected those demands, calling them “delusional.”
The plight of the hostages has deeply shaken Israelis, who see their lengthy cap- tivity as an enduring sym- bol of the failure of the state to protect its citizens from Hamas’ attack.
A group representing the families of the hostages called Netanyahu’s reported decision to keep the dele- gation away from the talks “scandalous” and said the families would set up a “mass barricade” outside the Israeli Defense Ministry unless Net- anyahu agreed to meet them.
Over 100 hostages were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November in return for 240 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
The war, which erupted after Hamas launched a sur- prise attack into Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 captive, ground on even as the talks
In Rafah, Ibrahim Hasouna survived but his entire family was killed — his parents, two brothers and the wife and three children of one of those brothers — when their house was reduced to rubble on top of them in the barrage of airstrikes that Israeli warplanes inflicted before dawn Monday.
The strikes provided cover for troops rescuing two hostages elsewhere in the town on the southern Gaza border.
At least 74 Palestinians were killed in the bombardment, which flattened large swaths of buildings and tents sheltering families who had fled from across Gaza.
Among the dead were 27 children and 22 women, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose researchers compiled the list from Rafah hospitals. The Israeli offensive has taken a heavy toll on women and children, with more than 12,300 Palestinian children and young teens killed in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said Monday.
The 30-year-old Ibrahim, his parents and his brothers arrived in Rafah a month earlier, the latest of their multiple moves to escape fighting after fleeing their homes in northern Gaza. They rented a small, one-story house on the east side of Rafah.