In a statement, the Civil Defense Agency said its facilities and vehicles had been routinely targeted by the Israeli army during its offensive on the Palestinian enclave.

It accused Israel of “deliberately hindering humanitarian efforts aimed at saving lives and protecting civilians”.

According to the agency, civil defense teams have managed to recover the bodies of 35,000 people, while around 10,000 people remain trapped under the rubble.

It added fuel shortages and Israeli attacks hinder civil defense teams from responding to thousands of emergency calls.

“Around 2,210 bodies have disappeared from cemeteries across the Gaza Strip,” the agency noted, without elaborating.

Israel’s dropping of around 85,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip has destroyed more than 80% of urban infrastructure and 90% of the general infrastructure.

“Around 17% of these ordnances remain unexploded,” it warned.

Flouting a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack last year by the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas.

The Israeli onslaught has since killed nearly 40,100 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 92,600, according to local health authorities.

More than 10 months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice for its actions in the coastal enclave.

The air raid on Saturday hit a house and adjacent warehouse sheltering displaced people at the entrance to the town of Zawaida, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, to where casualties were taken.

Among those killed was Sami Jawad al-Ejlah, a wholesaler who coordinated with the Israeli military to bring meat and fish to Gaza. The dead also included his two wives, 11 of their children aged two to 22, the children’s grandmother and three other relatives, according to a list provided by the hospital.

Omar al-Dreemli, a relative, stated: “We are in the morgue seeing indescribable scenes of limbs and severed heads and children who are dismembered.”

“He was a peaceful man,” said Abu Ahmed, a neighbour.

More than 40 civilians were sheltering in the house and warehouse at the time, he added.

The war began when Hamas-led fighters stormed across the border on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people, and abducting 250 to Gaza. More than 100 were released in a November ceasefire. About 110 are believed to be in Gaza, though Israeli authorities believe around a third are dead.

Gaza’s health ministry announced nearly 40,100 Palestinians had been killed in the war. Thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble and tens of thousands more have been injured.

The vast majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced, often multiple times, and about 84% of the territory has been put under evacuation orders by the Israeli military, according to the UN.

Mediators have spent months pursuing a three-phase plan in which Hamas would release the hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from the blockaded strip and the release of Palestinians prisoners from Israeli jails.

The US president, Joe Biden, stated on Friday that “we are closer than we have ever been” to a deal. But those comments were dismissed by a senior Hamas official on Saturday.

“To say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion,” the Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP, adding, “We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats.”

In his words, US President Joe Biden’s optimism about the outcome of the talks in Qatar do not reflect the true situation.

“The Biden administration is trying to show that the environment is positive. But the first round showed there are no improvements,” he stated.

“The mediators told us that the disagreed points haven’t been solved and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu added more conditions on it and made it even more complicated,” the Hamas spokesman continued.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan has also told Al Jazeera “everyone understands” now that Netanyahu and his government are not willing to achieve a ceasefire deal.

“The Israelis, in the two-day negotiations, rejected the paper, introduced by the Americans on June 24 based on Biden’s initiative, the Security Council resolution, and also responsible for the Israeli points,” he said.

“They rejected it even after Hamas accepted that. After the two-day negotiations, they stand against the paper and they have new ideas that were not discussed before,” he added.

“We have to remember … what the army minister in Israel said, which was the main obstacle to achieving an agreement, is Netanyahu. He was, and is, the obstacle.”

Biden on Friday said “we are closer than we’ve ever been” to a ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip “but we’re not there yet”, as talks in the region paused until next week.

He told reporters that although he’s “optimistic” about the prospect of a deal being agreed on, nothing is guaranteed.

Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Doha paused on Friday with negotiators to meet again next week seeking an agreement to end the war in the blockaded territory.

In a joint statement, the US, Qatar and Egypt announced Washington had presented a new proposal that built on points of agreement over the past week, closing gaps in a way that could allow rapid implementation of a deal.

Mediators would keep working on the proposal in coming days, they added.

The current round of talks started on Thursday amid growing fears of a regional war after Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut and Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.

The overall death toll from the Israeli campaign of death, destruction and genocide in Gaza has surpassed the grim milestone of 40,000, the Gaza Health Ministry announced on Thursday.