GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said on Sunday Zionist strikes killed at least 28 Palestinians, as the director of one of two hospitals still operating in the territory’s north reported bombardment nearby as the Zionist entity ordered the closure and evacuation of the facility. More than 14 months into the Zionist war, there was no let-up in the violence in the Gaza Strip even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was “closer than ever”.

The Zionist entity has faced growing criticism of its actions during the war, including from rights groups accusing it of acts of genocide. Pope Francis denounced on Sunday the “cruelty” of the Zionist entity’s bombardment, highlighting the deaths of children and attacks on schools and hospitals in Gaza for the second time in as many days, while the Zionist entity accused the pontiff of “double standards”.

On the ground in Gaza, civil agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family. An AFP photographer saw residents searching through the debris for survivors, while others looked for belongings they could salvage. In a nearby compound, bodies covered in blankets were laid on the ground.

“We are... losing loved ones every day,” said Deir el-Balah resident Naim Al-Ramlawi. “I pray to God that a truce will be reached soon” and would allow Gazans to finally “live a decent life, instead of this miserable life”, he said. The Zionist military confirmed a separate strike further north, on a school in Gaza City. Bassal said that eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.

AFP images showed the damaged school building where mangled concrete slabs and iron beams lay strewn amid patches of blood. Bassal said in a statement that an overnight strike killed three people in Rafah, in the south. And a drone strike early on Sunday hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, the spokesman added. The armed wings of Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad group said they killed many Zionist soldiers.

Meanwhile, the Zionist entity ordered the closure and evacuation on Sunday of one of the last hospitals still partly functioning in a besieged area on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, forcing medics to search for a way to bring hundreds of patients and staff to safety. The head of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, Husam Abu Safiya, told Reuters that obeying the order to shut down was “next to impossible” because there were not enough ambulances to get patients out.

“We currently have nearly 400 civilians inside the hospital, including babies in the neonatal unit, whose lives depend on oxygen and incubators. We cannot evacuate these patients safely without assistance, equipment, and time,” said Abu Safiya. “We are sending this message under heavy bombardment and direct targeting of the fuel tanks, which if hit will cause a large explosion and mass casualties of the civilians inside,” he said.

Abu Safiya said the military had ordered patients and staff to be evacuated to another hospital where conditions are even worse. Photos from inside the hospital showed patients on beds crammed into corridors to keep them away from windows. says its operation around three communities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip - Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia - is targeting Hamas militants. Palestinians accuse the Zionist entity of seeking to permanently depopulate the area to create a buffer zone. The Zionist offensive in Gaza has killed at least 45,259 people, a majority of them civilians. – Agencies