100 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks in 24 hours

At least 100 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours as heavy fighting continued between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants on the ground, Hamas-run health ministry said on Wednesday, reported Xinhua.

The ministry said in a statement that Israeli air and artillery attacks on Jabalia refugee camp in nothern Gaza left at least 60 people dead and dozens of others wounded.

The ministry accused Israeli military of bombing the Palestine School, which houses displaced people in the west of the refugee camp, and a residential neighborhood in the camp.

Meanwhile, at least 40 other people were killed in Israeli attacks on various areas in the Gaza Strip, including those on inhabited homes in the cities of Gaza, Khan Younis, and the Nuseirat refugee camp, the ministry added.

Palestinian security sources told Xinhua that the Israeli bombing intensified in the last hours from the air, land and sea, especially in the eastern parts of Gaza City, the Jabalia refugee camp, and areas east of Khan Younis.

At the same time, tens of thousands of displaced people arrived in Rafah, the southwestern tip of the Gaza Strip.

Most of the newly arrived people have to settle on the streets as shelters across the city far exceeded their capacity, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.

The OCHA added that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) distributed hundreds of tents that were set up in two separate sites for displaced persons in Rafah, along with hundreds of temporary shelters.

So far, 1.9 million people in Gaza, or approximately 85 percent of the population, are internally displaced, according to OCHA.

Nearly 1.2 million of these displaced people have been registered in 156 UNRWA facilities across the Gaza Strip, including about 1 million registered in 99 UNRWA shelters in the south.

On Tuesday evening, the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said that the Palestinian death toll had risen to 16,248 as a result of Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.

The media office said in a statement that among the dead were 7,112 children and 4,885 women, 286 doctors and medical staff, 32 civil defense staff, and 81 journalists.

According to the statement, the number of missing persons reached 7,600, and the number of injured people reached 43,616.

Israel has been waging a large-scale war against Hamas in Gaza since Oct. 7, after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel that has claimed the lives of about 1,200 people.