700 Palestinians Killed Overnight After Israeli Strikes in Gaza Strip
Gaza – More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in overnight after Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza's health ministry, as the enclave's hospitals cease to function.
Israel's military said it struck 400 "terror targets" and killed several Hamas commanders over the same period.
It also declared that it would not reduce its attacks despite Hamas's release of another two hostages.
The United Nations (UN) aid agencies meanwhile pleaded for sustained and safe humanitarian access, warning they were "on their knees".
A third of hospitals in Gaza are no longer functioning due to shortages of electricity, medicine and staff, and the shortage of clean water is now critical.
Warga Palestina mengevakuasi korban serangan udara Israel di Rafah, Gaza
- AP Photo/Hatem Ali
Israel launched its bombing campaign against Hamas – which Israel, the United Kingdom, United States and other powers class as a terrorist organisation – in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October in which at least 1,400 people were killed and 222 others were taken hostage.
"Nearly 5,800 people have been killed in Gaza since then," the health ministry informed.
Intense Israeli airstrikes overnight hit hundreds of locations across Gaza.
Some of those killed in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah were displaced people who had fled the north in response to an Israeli military order to evacuate the area for their own safety, local officials said.
Konflik Israel-Palestina
- (Foto AP/Fatima Shbair, File)
They included 13 members of one family from Gaza City, who had been staying in a residential building in Qarara, on the north-eastern outskirts of Khan Younis, where the population has swelled from 400,000 to 1.2 million.
"We were sleeping and suddenly a big explosion happened. All of my family are dead,"
a relative who survived said.
Later, about 20 people were reportedly killed in a strike on a residential building in the heavily-populated Amal area of Khan Younis.
