At least 59 people, including children, have been killed in a barrage of Israeli attacks across the besieged Gaza Strip, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
Rescue teams and medics in the enclave said at least 12 people belonging to the same family were among those killed on Thursday when their home in northern Gaza’s Jabalia was targeted.
Six members of another family – a couple and their four children – were killed when an air strike levelled their home in Gaza City, the civil defence said in a statement.
Ahmed Arar, a first responder in Gaza City, said there were “large quantities of body parts and remains”, including those of many children, after the attack.
“There are only hands, legs, and heads. They are all severed and torn,” Arar told Al Jazeera.
Another 10 people were killed and several others wounded in a strike on a former police station in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, according to a statement from the Indonesian Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
“Everyone started running and screaming, not knowing what to do from the horror and severity of the bombing,” 23-year-old Abdel Qader Sabah, from Jabalia, said of the attack that hit the station that is located near a market.
Israel’s military said it struck what it described as a Hamas “command and control centre” in the Jabalia area, without clarifying if it was targeting the police station. The army has previously used similar justifications in attacks that hit hospitals and numerous shelters housing displaced Palestinian families.
At least 26 people were killed in other Israeli attacks across the territory, according to medics and the civil defence agency.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said there is “an ongoing surge in the rate of Israeli attacks on the entire Gaza Strip”.
He said that civil defence crews are still working to dig through the rubble at the scene of the latest attack in Jabalia.
He cited one rescue worker as saying many of the victims have sustained burn wounds.
‘Larger’ offensive?
Israel resumed its military assault on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire that had brought a temporary halt to fighting in the blockaded territory.
The military is continuing to seal vital border crossings for the eighth week in a row, denying the entry of much-needed humanitarian aid, including medical supplies and fuel, worsening an already deep humanitarian crisis amid relentless bombardment.
Israel’s army chief, visiting troops in Gaza on Thursday, threatened a “larger” offensive if captives seized in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, are not freed.
“If we do not see progress in the return of the hostages in the near future, we will expand our activities to a larger and more significant operation,” Eyal Zamir said.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, ordered Palestinians living in the northern areas of Beit Hanoon and Sheikh Zeid to evacuate in advance of an attack.
The United Nations has warned that Israel’s expanding evacuation orders across Gaza are resulting in the “forcible transfer” of people into ever-shrinking areas.
Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began.
Also on Thursday, the Gaza Health Ministry said the Durra Children’s Hospital in Gaza City had become nonoperational, a day after an Israeli strike hit the upper part of the building, damaging the intensive care unit and destroying the facility’s solar power panel system.
Gaza’s health system has been devastated by Israel’s 18-month-old military campaign, putting many of the territory’s hospitals out of action, killing medics, and reducing crucial supplies.
Efforts by key mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have so far failed to produce a lasting ceasefire.
Since Israel resumed its assault, at least 1,978 people have been killed in Gaza, raising the overall death toll to at least 51,355 since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The military said Thursday that Israeli tank fire killed a UN worker in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah last month, according to an investigation’s initial findings.
It had initially denied operating in the area where a Bulgarian employee of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) was killed on March 19.
The findings come after the military on Sunday reported on a separate probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers in Gaza.
It finally admitted that operational failures led to their deaths, and said a field commander would be dismissed.