At least 84 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes in northern Gaza overnight and into Sunday, taking the death toll in Israel yearlong genocidal war to 42,603, the territory's Health Ministry said.
A ministry statement added that some 99,795 others were injured in the ongoing assault.
"Israeli forces killed 84 people and injured 158 others in seven massacres of families in the last 24 hours,” the ministry said.
"Many people are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” it added.
It said another 40 people were wounded in the strikes on the town of Beit Lahiya, which was among the first targets of Israel’s ground invasion nearly a year ago.
Israel has been carrying out a large-scale operation in northern Gaza for the last two weeks, alleging Hamas has regrouped there. Palestinian officials say hundreds of people have been killed and that the health sector in the north is on the verge of collapse.
There was no immediate comment on the strikes in Beit Lahiya from the Israeli military, which said it was "continuing to operate across Gaza in both aerial strikes and ground operations."
Among the dead were two parents and their four children, and a woman, her son and her daughter-in-law and their four children, according to Raheem Kheder, a medic. He said the strike flattened a multi-story building and at least four neighboring houses.
Mounir 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.
Doctors Without Borders, the international charity known by its French acronym MSF, called on Israeli forces "to immediately stop their attacks on hospitals in North Gaza" after the Health Ministry said Israeli troops had fired on two hospitals over the weekend.
The military said it was operating near one of the hospitals but had not fired directly at it and that it was looking into the other incident.
"The ever-worsening escalation of violence and non-stop Israeli military operations that we have been witnessing over the past two weeks in northern Gaza have horrifying consequences," said Anna Halford, an emergency coordinator for MSF.
"When hospitals are attacked, their infrastructure destroyed, and the electricity cut off, the lives of patients and medical staff are under threat."
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 and complicating rescue efforts.
Israel has been carrying out a major operation in Jabalia, also in northern Gaza, for the last two weeks. The military says it launched the operation against Hamas members who had allegedly regrouped there.
Over the course of the war, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to Jabaliya, a densely populated urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation.
The north has already suffered the heaviest destruction of the war, and has been encircled by Israeli forces since late last year, following the Hamas incursion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
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.
