Israel carried out deadly bombardments in Gaza on Sunday as international calls mounted for greater protection of civilians and the renewal of an expired truce with Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The Israeli army said it had conducted more than 400 strikes in Gaza since a ceasefire collapsed on Friday, with the Hamas government saying at least 240 people had been killed.
Hamas and Palestinian group Islamic Jihad announced “rocket barrages” against multiple Israeli cities and towns including Tel Aviv, and Israel said that two of its soldiers had died in combat, the first since the end of the truce.
At least seven people were killed in an Israeli bombing early Sunday near Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, the Hamas-run government said.
Israeli strikes also hit the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza late Saturday, killing at least 13 people, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
US Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday sharply rebuked the rising civilian toll in Israel’s eight-week war, sparked by an unprecedented attack on October 7.
“Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” she told reporters at UN climate talks in Dubai.
“Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.”
An estimated 1.7 million people in Gaza — more than two-thirds of the population — have been displaced by war, according to the United Nations.
“I cannot find words strong enough to express our concern over what we’re witnessing,” the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on Sunday on X, formerly Twitter.
Fadel Naim, chief doctor at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City, said his morgue had received 30 bodies on Saturday, including seven children.
“The planes bombed our houses: three bombs, three houses destroyed,” Nemr al-Bel, 43, told AFP, adding he had counted 10 dead in his family and “13 more still under the rubble”.
Gazans are short of food, water and other essentials, and many homes have been destroyed. UN agencies have declared a humanitarian catastrophe, although some aid trucks did arrive Saturday.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israel had told NGOs not to bring aid convoys across the Rafah border crossing from Egypt after the truce expired.
But the charity said on Saturday its Egyptian colleagues had managed to send over a number of trucks.
END.