CAIRO >> Israeli airstrikes killed at least three dozen Palestinians in southern Gaza, health workers said Saturday, as officials including a Hamas delegation gathered for high-level cease-fire talks in neighboring Egypt.

Eleven members of a family, including two children, were among the dead after an airstrike hit their home in Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital, which received a total of 33 bodies from three strikes in and around the city that also hit tuk-tuks and passersby. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said that it received three bodies from another strike.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.

First responders also recovered 16 bodies from the Hamad City area of Khan Younis after a partial pullout of Israeli forces, 10 bodies from a residential building west of Khan Younis and two farther south in Rafah. The circumstances of their deaths weren’t immediately clear, but the areas were repeatedly bombed by the Israeli military over the past week. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies.

Some residents returned to Hamad City, crunching on rubble as they walked between destroyed apartment buildings. One multistory building’s entire wall was gone, its rooms framing residents picking through debris.

“There is nothing, no apartment, no furniture, no homes, only destruction,” Neveen Kheder said.

“We are dying slowly,” she said. “You know what, if they gave a mercy bullet, it would be better than what is happening to us.”

The war in Gaza began when Hamas and other fighters staged a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people, primarily civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding around 110 hostages. Israeli authorities estimate about a third are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry said Saturday a total of 69 dead and 212 wounded had been brought to hospitals across Gaza over the past 24 hours.

Israel’s military announced the deaths of three more soldiers in combat in central Gaza on Friday.

The conflict has caused widespread destruction and forced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to flee their homes, with many cramming into shrinking “humanitarian zones.”

Experts met on Saturday on technical issues on the eve of high-level talks in Cairo on a possible cease-fire.

The U.S. delegation, led by CIA Director William Burns and Brett McGurk, the White House Middle East adviser, held talks with senior Egyptian officials and then with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, according to a person familiar with the ongoing talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment publicly.