Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 93 people and wounded 278 on Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, as Israeli troops pressed on with ground operations there.
The toll did not specify the number of combatants among the dead. Local officials said dozens of women and children were killed, but the Hamas ministry did not specify how many.
One strike in the northern Shati refugee camp killed a Hamas member of the Palestinian Authority’s defunct legislature, as well as a man and a woman and their six children who were sheltering in the same building, according to officials from Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken. The legislator was identified as Mohammed Faraj al-Ghoul, 68.
One of the deadliest strikes hit a house in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa district on Monday evening, killing 19 members of the family living inside, according to Shifa. The dead included eight women and six children. A strike on a tent housing displaced people in the same district killed a man and a woman and their two children.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes. The military says it takes measures to mitigate harm to civilians, including using aerial surveillance and precision munitions, and accuses Hamas of embedding itself in civilian infrastructure, including hospitals.
Also on Tuesday, Gaza resident Anas Arafat told The Times of Israel that Israeli drone fire had for hours prevented rescuers from reaching his parents, brothers, and their children, who he said were buried under a building in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighborhood following an Israeli strike on Monday.
According to Arafat, the rescuers arrived Tuesday afternoon lacking heavy equipment needed to move the rubble. The rescuers recovered the remains of one woman. It appeared that the rest of the family — 13 people in total — did not survive, as no voices were heard from under the rubble since Monday.
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately comment on the incident.
The IDF on Tuesday urged residents of Gaza City and Jabalia in the Strip’s north to evacuate amid the ongoing offensive.
“The IDF is operating in the area with increased force to destroy the enemy and terror organizations. The fighting is spreading westward toward the city center,” the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee said on X.
The warning called for civilians to head south to the Mawasi area on the coast.
The military announced that it had recently demolished a 3.5 kilometer (2.2 mile)-long Hamas tunnel in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
The tunnel was located by troops of the Kfir Infantry Brigade and the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit during operations in the south of Khan Younis, the IDF said.
The tunnel connected to other underground passages and also featured several rooms used by Hamas operatives as living quarters, according to the military.
The IDF said the Kfir troops also located weapons and destroyed a facility used to store explosive devices.
The IDF released footage showing the demolition of tunnels and booby traps in Beit Hanoun, amid an ongoing offensive against Hamas in the northern Gaza town.
Troops of the Givati Infantry Brigade killed dozens of operatives in combat and by directing airstrikes, as well as destroyed Hamas infrastructure, including tunnels, in a joint effort with combat engineers, the military said.
The Hamas health ministry says more than 58,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the terror group invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking the war in Gaza.
The figure, which cannot be independently verified, does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says it had killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January, as well as about 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the onslaught, which killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.