DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes killed at least 15 people, including women and children overnight in Gaza, according to hospital officials and a body count by an Associated Press journalist on Sunday.
The latest strikes occurred as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to leave Monday for the United States, where he is expected to meet with President Joe Biden and address Congress to make his case for the nine-month war against Hamas while cease-fire negotiations continue. A team will be sent to continue talks on Thursday, Netanyahu's office said.
The already precarious humanitarian conditions inside besieged Gaza have worsened with the discovery of the polio virus as water and sanitation services have suffered for the territory's population of 2.3 million, most of it displaced. Traces of the virus were found in sewage samples in Gaza. The World Health Organization has said no one has been treated for symptoms caused by the infection.
Israel's military said that soldiers would be vaccinated, and it would work with organizations to bring in vaccines for Palestinians.
Israel's latest airstrikes were in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, where nine people, including two children, were killed, and the southern city of Khan Younis, where at least six people were killed, including two girls. Men and women wept and embraced the small bodies in white shrouds.
''Unknown body of five-month baby'' was written on one.
Smoke also rose from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, but there was no immediate word on casualties.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 38,900 people, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 120 remain held, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
