RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — A barrage of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday crushed multiple residential buildings and buried families under rubble, as health officials in the besieged territory reported hundreds killed in the past day and the closure of medical facilities because of bomb damage and a lack of power.
The soaring death toll from Israel’s escalating bombardment is unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It augurs an even greater loss of life in Gaza once Israeli forces backed by tanks and artillery launch an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas militants.
Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the devastating Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on towns in southern Israel.
The Gaza Health Ministry run by Hamas said the attacks killed at least 704 people over the past day, including 305 children and 173 women; the ministry said it tallies daily figures collected from hospital directors. The AP could not independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas.
Israel said Tuesday it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, killing Hamas commanders, hitting militants as they were preparing to launch rockets into Israel and striking command centers and a Hamas tunnel shaft. The previous day, Israel reported 320 strikes. Witnesses and health officials said many of the airstrikes hit residential buildings, some of them in southern Gaza where Israel had told civilians to take shelter.
One overnight strike leveled a four-story residential building in the southern city of Khan Younis, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens of others, according to survivors.
The dead included 13 members of the Saqallah family, said Ammar al-Butta, a relative who survived the airstrike. He said there were about 100 people sheltering in the building, including many who had evacuated from Gaza City following Israel's orders for civilians in northern Gaza to move south.
“They were sheltering at our home because we thought that our area would be safe. But apparently there is no safe place in Gaza,” he said.
Another airstrike hit a bustling marketplace in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing several shoppers and wounding dozens as they shopped for meat and vegetables, witnesses said.
Men used sledgehammers to break up concrete and dug with their bare hands through the jagged wreckage to save anyone they could, or recover the dead. Rescuers put an oxygen mask on the face of one man buried up to his chest in rubble as they worked for 15 minutes to free him.
In the nearby al-Aqsa Hospital, the bodies of three children killed in the day’s bombardment were lined up on the floor, wrapped in white cloth.
In Gaza City, at least 19 people were killed when an airstrike hit the house of the Bahloul family, according to survivors, who said dozens more people remained buried. Workers pulled at least two children out of the collapsed building. Nearby, the legs of a dead woman and another person, both still half buried, dangled out of the wreckage.
The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors. The figure includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.
The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government.
As the death toll in Gaza spiraled, facilities to deal with the casualties were dwindling. A total of 46 out of 72 primary health care facilities, and 12 out of 35 hospitals, stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said.
Gaza’s five main hospitals were all filled beyond capacity, the territory's health ministry said.