Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in overnight attacks across Gaza.
At least 24 Palestinians were killed in air raids on Gaza City, in the north of the enclave early on Tuesday. Among those killed were 10 relatives of senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza health officials said.
Two of the air raids hit schools in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people. Another attack in the Shati camp, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, killed 10 people.
The house hit in this attack belonged to the extended family of Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh. One of his sisters was killed along with other relatives.
Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, leads Hamas’s diplomacy and is the public face of the group that runs Gaza. He has lost many relatives in Israeli air attacks since the start of the war, including three sons.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces targeted fighters, who had been involved in the planning of attacks on Israel, overnight in Gaza City. It claimed that the targets included some of those who had taken part in Hamas’s October 7 attacks and some involved in holding Israeli captives taken to Gaza.
The Israeli air force struck two structures used by Hamas in Shati and Daraj Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip. They “operated inside school compounds that were used by Hamas as a shield for its terrorist activities”, the statement said.
Hamas denies using civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals for military purposes. It issued a statement describing the attacks on the two schools and the house in Shati as “massacres”.
“We hold the administration of US President Joe Boden responsible for the continued war of genocide against our Palestinian people in Gaza Strip through continuing to offer the Zionist government and its criminal army political and military cover,” the statement read.
Meanwhile, Israeli tanks also pressed deeper into western areas of the southern city of Rafah overnight, blowing up homes, according to local witnesses.
The armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups said in a joint statement their fighters had fired mortars overnight against Israeli forces in the Yibna neighbourhood of eastern Rafah.
In nearby Khan Younis, medics said, Israeli tank shelling had wounded several people at a tent camp in the west of the city.
At least 10 people, including guards securing aid trucks, were killed in an attack on people seeking aid supplies in Khan Younis.
In central Gaza, an air raid killed five people, including four children, and wounded at least 10 others late on Monday, hospital officials said.
The dead and the injured were taken from the Maghazi refugee camp to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir el-Balah.