More than 70 people killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza in deadliest attack in weeks

Fresh Israeli airstrikes have pounded Gaza as the world's attention is on the Iranian missile attack on Israel and Israel's ground invasion into Lebanon.

Gaza’s Health Ministry has said the death toll from a large Israeli attack in the southern city of Khan Younis has risen to 51, with at least 82 people wounded.

“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads,” the ministry said, adding that “ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them.”

Israel’s military has yet to comment on the operation, which began overnight yesterday into early Wednesday. Palestinian residents say ground forces pushed into three neighbourhoods.

Mahmoud al-Razd, a resident who says four of his relatives were killed in the raids, described heavy destruction and says first responders struggled to reach destroyed homes.

Records at the European Hospital in Khan Younis show seven women and 12 children, as young as 22 months old, were among those killed.

Another 25 people, including two children, were killed in separate strikes across Gaza overnight, according to local hospitals.

That included in Gaza City, where the Israeli military said it carried out strikes on two schools.

At least 21 people were killed in the strikes on the sites where Palestinians were sheltering, many of them children, the Civil Defense and a medical source at Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City said.

In another incident in Gaza City, the Civil Defense and Al Ahli Hospital said four people were killed, including two children.

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Israeli artillery shelling south of Wadi Gaza, near Netzarim, killed 14 people overnight, and airstrikes on Nuseirat in central Gaza, killed six people, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

On October 7, Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, and took around 250 hostage. Some 100 have not yet been released, around 65 of whom are believed to be alive.

Israel’s latest offensive on Gaza since then has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who say a little more than half were women and children.

The military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

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