An Israeli military strike killed 12 Palestinians in a house in Gaza City early on Saturday, bringing the death toll from strikes across Gaza to 62 over the last day, Palestinian medics said.
An Israeli an air strike at dawn on the house of the al-Ghoula family in Gaza City destroying the building and killing 11 people, seven of them children.
“The home, which housed several displaced people, was completely destroyed,” said civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.
“It was a two-storey building and several people are still under the rubble,” he added, saying Israeli drones had “also fired on ambulance staff”.
Images showed people searching for survivors trapped under the smoking rubble of the house Shujaiya, in the east of Gaza City, while bodies were lined up on the ground, covered in white sheets.
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“A huge explosion woke us up. Everything was shaking,” witness Ahmed Mussa told AFP.
“I was surprised to see (the strike) was on the house of our neighbours, the al-Ghoul family. It was home to children, women. There wasn’t anyone wanted or who posed a threat.”
Elsewhere, the civil defence agency said five security officers, tasked with accompanying aid convoys, were killed by an Israeli strike as they were driving in a car in the southern city of Khan Younis.
Bassal accused Israel of having “deliberately targeted” them in order to “affect the humanitarian supply chain and increase the suffering” of the population.
Local rescuers also said three members of the same family, including a child, were also killed when their house was bombed in Khan Younis.
Later on Saturday, an Israeli airstrike killed three people in a car east of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, medics said.Â
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The Israeli military has significantly increased its operations in the Gaza Strip in recent days amid renewed international to reach a ceasefire agreement before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on 20 January.
On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a delegation to resume Gaza ceasefire negotiations, even as he continues to publicly rule out a permanent end to the war.
A new round of indirect talks on a ceasefire in Gaza, brokered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators, resumed in Doha on Friday.
Hamas said it was committed to reaching an agreement “as soon as possible” but it was unclear how close the two sides were.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said the new round of discussions will focus on a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, Reuters reported.
At least 45,717 people have been killed in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, and at least 108,856 people have been wounded since the start of the war on Gaza nearly 15 months ago.
