GAZA: Israel struck Gaza on Sunday as international concern mounted over the spiralling civilian death toll on the third day of fighting after a truce ended.
More than 15,200 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory in more than eight weeks of heavy bombardment.
Israeli air and artillery strikes hit Gaza's northern frontier, throwing thick clouds of smoke and dust into the sky.
At least one rocket salvo fired from the territory at Israel was intercepted by air defence systems, said reporters in Sderot near Gaza.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said at least 160 Palestinian deaths were reported in two incidents in northern Gaza on Saturday: the bombing of a six-storey building in Jabalia refugee camp, and of an entire block in a Gaza City neighbourhood.
Repeated bursts of heavy automatic weapons fire were heard over an AFPTV livecam.
Gaza's government on Saturday said 240 people had been killed since the week-long truce expired early on Friday.
Israel unleashed a relentless air and ground campaign that has killed mostly women and children in Gaza.
"We have said it from day one: the price to pay for the release of Zionist prisoners will be the release of all our prisoners — after a ceasefire," Saleh al-Arouri, deputy head of Hamas's politburo, said on Saturday evening.
Israel's army has struck the territory's south and issued warnings to Palestinians trapped there to seek what it said would be safe zones, "if required".
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned that "as a result of Israel's conduct of hostilities, hundreds of thousands are being confined into ever smaller areas in southern Gaza".
"I repeat, there is no safe place in Gaza," he said.
Palestinian groups announced "rocket barrages" against multiple Israeli cities and towns including Tel Aviv, and Israel said two of its soldiers had died in combat, the first since the truce ended.
In a summary issued on Sunday, the military said a drone strike had "eliminated" five Palestinian commanders.
In a new estimate, OCHA said around 1.8 million people in Gaza, roughly 75 per cent of the population, had been displaced, many to overcrowded and unsanitary shelters.
Nasser hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis overflowed with both the wounded and the dead.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Sunday on X platform that a WHO team visited Nasser hospital and found it with 1,000 patients, three times its capacity.
Some were being treated on the floor, in conditions "unimaginable for the provision of health care", he said.
Gazans are short of food, water and other essentials, and many homes have been destroyed but the aid reaching them is "a drop in the ocean of needs," said Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). — AFP
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