29 killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza
Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 29 people Friday in the Palestinian territory, devastated by war and under a total Israeli aid blockade for two months.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on 18 March after the collapse of a ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting.
Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told AFP.
Another six people were killed in a separate strike targeting the Al-Masri family home in the northern city of Beit Lahia, he added.
In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more, the civil defence agency reported.
Elsewhere across the Gaza Strip, at least eight additional fatalities were reported in similar attacks, the agency said.
Since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, at least 2,326 people have been killed, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
The war erupted after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, 2023.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel says its renewed military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza on 2 March, days before the collapse of the ceasefire which had come into effect on 19 January.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that the humanitarian response in Gaza was on the "verge of total collapse".
"This situation must not -- and cannot -- be allowed to escalate further," Pascal Hundt, ICRC Deputy Director of Operations said in a statement.