Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strikes across Gaza

Dozens of Palestinians were killed or injured in an Israeli strike on a multi-storey residential building housing at least six families in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya town on Sunday, medics and residents said.

Gaza's civil defence said 26 people were killed on Sunday, including children, and at least 59 were missing after an Israeli air strike hit a building in the Palestinian territory's north.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency said around 70 people were living in the property but the Gaza government media office put the number of those killed at 72.

Video footage of the strike site obtained by Reuters showed locals pulling bodies from a huge pile of rubble, with surrounding houses also damaged, some heavily.

AFP images showed men covered in dust scrambling to reach people under the rubble, while some of the bodies were taken away on a donkey-pulled cart.

Other AFP images showed the flattened building with broken concrete and twisted metal sticking out from the ruins as more bodies covered in blankets lay nearby.

Earlier on Sunday, Gaza's civil defence said other Israeli strikes killed at least 20 people, including four women and three children, across the war-torn territory.

Hamas, which runs the territory, accused Israel of committing a "massacre" which it said is "a continuation of the genocidal war and revenge against unarmed civilians".

The Israeli army sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, last month in what it said was a campaign to fight Hamas waging attacks and prevent them from regrouping.

A statement by the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, on Sunday said fighters blew up an Israeli army vehicle during fighting in Beit Lahiya. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the claim.

Later on Sunday, an Israeli strike killed five Palestinians, tasked with escorting aid trucks that entered the enclave, according to residents in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Another strike in Gaza City killed two men, they added.

Earlier in the day, an Israeli air strike killed at least 10 people in the Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip, when a missile hit a house, medics said.

Four other people were killed in the nearby Nuseirat camp, they added.

The Gaza health ministry said 43,800 people have been confirmed killed since Oct. 7, 2023.