The discovery on Saturday, and continuing into Sunday, comes after the Israeli military withdrew its troops from the southern city on April 7. Much of the Khan Younis is now in ruins after months of relentless Israeli bombardment and heavy fighting.

In a statement late on Saturday, Palestinian emergency services said: “Our teams continue their search and retrieval operations for the remaining martyrs in the coming days as there are still a significant number of them.”

Earlier this week, a mass grave was discovered at al-Shifa Hospital following a two-week siege. It was one of several mass graves found at al-Shifa – the largest medical facility in the coastal enclave.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, devastated Gaza’s two largest cities and left a swath of destruction across the territory.

At least two-thirds of the casualties are children and women. It also says the real toll is likely higher as many bodies are stuck beneath the rubble left by air strikes or are in areas that are unreachable for medics.

Israel launched its war on Gaza after fighters from Hamas and other Palestinian groups carried out an attack inside Israel on October 7 killing about 1,139 people and taking more than 200 people captive.

Israeli strikes in the coastal enclave are ongoing, including on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where overnight raids killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials announced on Sunday.

The first strike on early on Sunday morning killed a man, his wife and their three-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. The woman was pregnant, and the doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said.

Israel has carried out near daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

The second strike killed 17 children and two women, all from the same family, according to hospital records. An air strike in Rafah the night before killed nine people, including six children.

Israel has also pledged to expand its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from the United States.

However, the US continues to provide weapons packages to Israel while pushing for an end to hostilities in the six-month war. On Saturday, the US House of Representatives with broad bipartisan support passed a $95bn legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

“Israeli occupation continues to prevent the entry of cooking gas and various types of fuel into the Gaza Strip for the seventh month, especially for Gaza City and the northern governorates, which threatens to exacerbate the humanitarian and health crisis amid the ongoing aggression,” head of the Gaza Media Office Salama Marouf said.

He added: “Palestinians in Gaza rely on primitive alternative means by igniting fires from wood, charcoal, and building rubble leftovers, resulting in hundreds being affected by respiratory diseases due to the use of plastic and chemical materials to ignite fires, emitting toxic gases.”

“Hundreds of new cases have been recorded, afflicted with various respiratory diseases, due to relying on igniting fires using the mentioned methods for long hours daily over the past months,” Marouf also stated.

He warned that this “forebodes the increasing severity of this crisis and the citizens’ susceptibility to lung cancer and respiratory diseases due to the toxic gases emitted from these means.”

He called on the international community to “pressure the (Israeli) occupation to allow the entry of cooking gas.”

Since the beginning of the Israeli war on the strip, Israel has been preventing the entry of cooking gas into northern Gaza areas, while allowing limited quantities into southern Gaza areas.

Flouting the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip where at least 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 76,900 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Hostilities have continued unabated, however, and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.

“A deplorable number of children have also been injured amid intense and often indiscriminate attacks,” it wrote on X.

“An immediate cease-fire is the last hope remaining.”

Flouting the International Court of Justice’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on Gaza where at least 34,400 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 76,900 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.

The Israeli onslaught has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Hostilities have continued unabated and aid deliveries remain woefully insufficient to address the humanitarian catastrophe.