Israeli forces continue to bombard the Gaza Strip with airstrikes while also engaging in ground skirmishes with Hamas, with over 436 people killed in Israeli aerial attacks.
Most of the casualties occurred in the densely populated southern region of Gaza, with the conflict expanding beyond Gaza, with Israeli aircraft conducting strikes in southern Lebanon.
Additionally, Israeli troops clashed with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s attacks concentrated on the Gaza Strip’s centre and north, Palestinian media reported.
With the violence raging unchecked, Iran said the region could spiral “out of control” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a stark warning to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, saying getting involved would be “the mistake of its life”.
Meanwhile, at least 5,087 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since Oct. 7, including 2,055 children, Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday, adding that 15,273 were wounded.
The health ministry in Gaza said at least 80 people had been killed in the overnight raids on central Gaza which had destroyed more than 30 homes.
At the hospital morgue, an AFP journalist saw the bodies of many children on the bloodied floor, where distraught families wept as they identified the victims.
Among them was a man clutching his dead toddler and a young boy who pulled back a blanket over his little sister’s body.
“My cousin was sleeping in his house with his daughter in his arms. He was a man with no record, nothing to do with the resistance,” said Wael Wafi, gazing at the body of his cousin, his arm still wrapped around his three-year-old daughter Misk.
Also Sunday, the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees said that 29 of its staff had been killed since the start of the war in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying half of them were teachers. On Saturday it had given a toll of 17.
The scale of the bombing has left basic systems unable to function, with the UN saying dozens of unidentified bodies had been buried in a mass grave in Gaza City because cold storage had run out.
Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was killed near the Gaza border by an anti-tank missile fired by Palestinian fighters inside the enclave, the army said.
French labour unions and organisations call for peace and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during a demonstration at Place de la Republique in Paris. PHOTO: Reuters
