The health ministry reported that the Israeli occupation carried out seven massacres in the strip, adding that 158 wounded have been admitted to hospitals within the past 24 hours.
The ministry said Israel killed at least 42,603 people in Gaza since 7 October 2023, mostly children and women.
The toll includes deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 99,795 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the deadly war began.
"Our civil defence crews recovered 73 martyrs and a large number of wounded as a result of the Israeli air force targeting a residential area ... in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza," Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, told AFP earlier.
"There are still martyrs under the rubble," he added.
Bassal said residences of several families had been hit in the strike, which happened late on Saturday.
Gaza government media office confirmed the toll, saying the dead included women and children as the strike had hit a "densely populated residential area."
Among the dead were two parents and their four children, and a woman, her son and her daughter-law and their four children, Raheem Kheder, a medic told AP. He said the strike flattened a multi-story building and at least four neighboring houses.
Muneer Al-Bursh, director general of the Health Ministry, said the flood of wounded from the strikes compounded “an already catastrophic situation for the health care system” in northern Gaza, in a post on X.
Director of the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia Marwan Sultan called for protection for medical staff, patients, and hospitals, saying the “situation is extremely difficult” amid an Israeli siege that has lasted over 10 days, Quds News Network reported.
Internet connectivity went down in northern Gaza late Saturday and had not yet been restored by midday Sunday, making it difficult to gather information about the strikes.
Israel has been carrying out a major operation in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, also in northern Gaza, for the last two weeks.
The north has already suffered the heaviest destruction of the war, and has been encircled by Israeli forces since late last year.
Israel ordered the entire population of the northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, to evacuate to the south in the opening weeks of the war and reiterated those instructions earlier this month. Most of the population fled last year, but around 400,000 people are believed to have remained in the north.
Palestinians who fled the north at the start of the war have not been allowed to return.
Before the latest strike, the operation had already killed more than 400 people in north Gaza, Bassal told AFP earlier on Saturday.
Meanwhile, another two Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli drone strike targeting a group of civilians in the village of Khirbet Al-Adas, near Rafah, on Sunday morning.
UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland condemned the Israeli air strikes in Beit Lahia saying that “horrifying scenes” are unfolding there and “nowhere is safe in Gaza”.
He called, in a statement, for an immediate halt to attacks on civilians and emphasised the need to protect displaced Palestinians.
Palestinians are living through "unspeakable horrors" in the north of the Gaza Strip, the United Nations' top aid official Joyce Msuya said, insisting that "these atrocities must stop."
There is "appalling news from northern Gaza where Palestinians continue to endure unspeakable horrors under siege by Israeli forces," the UN's acting humanitarian chief said on X.
"In Jabaliya, people are trapped under the rubble and first responders are blocked from reaching them," she added.
"Tens of thousands of Palestinians are being forcibly displaced. Essential supplies are running out. Hospitals, overwhelmed with patients, have been hit," Msuya noted.
Additionally, Oxfam said four of its water engineers were killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, despite prior coordination with Tel Aviv.
Oxfam, the nonprofit confederation representing 21 NGOs, called for an independent investigation after the men were killed in a town east of Khan Younis, on their way to repair water infrastructure.
The engineers had coordinated with Israeli authorities to do the work, Oxfam said.
"Despite prior coordination with Israeli authorities their clearly-marked vehicle was bombed," the organization added.
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