More than 70 people have been killed in a series of intensive ground operations and airstrikes by the Israel Defense Forces in southern Gaza, Palestinian medical officials said on Wednesday.
Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets across Gaza nearly a year after Hamas’s 7 October attack triggered the war in the territory, and even as attention has shifted to Lebanon and Iran.
The health ministry in Gaza said at least 51 people were killed and 82 wounded in the operation in Khan Younis that began early on Wednesday. Records at the European hospital show that seven women and 12 children, as young as 22 months old, were among those killed.
Another 23 people, including two children, were killed in separate strikes across Gaza, according to local hospitals.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment but has previously accused Hamas of exploiting civilian facilities for military purposes, a tactic the militant Islamist organisation denies using.
The escalation came after Iran launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for its campaign against Tehran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon. Israel has vowed a “painful response”.
A spokesperson for Nasser hospital said: “Yesterday, the Israeli army started a sudden ground operation in the eastern areas of Khan Younis. The areas were attacked with a very violent aerial bombardment … The martyrs and the wounded arrived at the European hospital and here.”
Residents said Israeli planes had carried out heavy airstrikes as its ground forces staged an incursion into three neighbourhoods in Khan Younis. Mahmoud al-Razd, who said four relatives were killed in the raids, described heavy destruction and said first responders had struggled to reach destroyed homes.
“The explosions and shelling were massive,” he said. “Many people are thought to be under the rubble, and no one can retrieve them.”
Majid Qudeih, a 44-year-old journalist living in Khuza’a, east of Khan Younis, said the bombing had been intense.
“We couldn’t sleep all night, I stayed up next to my kids to make them feel some safety but there was heavy bombardment and there were so many [pieces of] shrapnel falling near the house, and the sound of bullets was so loud. I was lying to my kids by saying the bombing was far away but in fact it was very close,” Qudeih told the Guardian.
“The shelling began at about nine in the evening, but most of it was in the areas adjacent to the village of Khuza’a … Today, the army withdrew from the al-Fakhari area, thank God none of us were hurt.”
Israel carried out a lengthy offensive earlier this year in Khan Younis that reduced much of Gaza’s second largest city to rubble. Over the course of the war, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to areas of Gaza as Hamas militants have regrouped.
The war began on 7 October when Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 250 hostage in a raid into southern Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say more than half were women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.