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Israel has launched a fresh aerial assault on southern and central Gaza following a weekend in which a strike targeting a senior Hamas commander left dozens dead, according to Gazan authorities.
Ten Palestinians were killed in Rafah as several homes were destroyed and five were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City, officials in the Hamas-run strip said.
It comes after up to 90 people were killed and hundreds were left wounded as the Israeli military targeted Hamas chief Mohammed Deif, who is believed to be the mastermind behind the 7 October attack that triggered the war.
The Israeli Air Force said it struck dozens of Hamas military targets across Gaza on Monday, killing gunmen across Rafah and central Gaza.
Last week, the Israeli military issued a sweeping instruction for the entire population in Gaza City – in northern Gaza – to evacuate south.
The United Nations said it would only “fuel mass suffering for Palestinian families”. The assault, which began in late June, has sent some 80,000 people fleeing the area.
Home to more than a quarter of Gaza’s residents before the war, Gaza City was largely razed to the ground in late 2023, but hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had returned to homes in the ruins before Israel once again ordered them out.
Much of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been forced to leave their homes at least once during the war, with many now sheltering in the south of the strip.
Displaced survivor Aya Mohammad, a market seller, said of Monday’s attack: “Those moments as the ground shook underneath my feet and the dust and sand rose to the sky and I saw dismembered bodies was like nothing I have seen in my life.
The 30-year-old added: “Where to go is what everybody asks, and no one has the answer.”
Later on Monday, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, where Israel hasn't yet invaded and hundreds of thousands have taken refuge, the municipality issued an urgent statement saying it was no longer able to provide 700,000 people in the area with drinking water after running out of fuel.
"We urge citizens to preserve what is left in their private tankers and we stress the need to maintain the spirit of cooperation and sharing," the statement said.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned up to 6,400 Palestinians were still missing and are feared to be trapped under debris, buried without identification, or held in Israeli detention.
Since April this year, 1,100 new cases of missing people in Gaza have been registered and remain unsolved, the organisation added.
“Each week we can receive anywhere between 500 and 2,500 calls to our hotlines, and the majority of these are requests for missing family members,” Sarah Davies, an ICRC spokesperson, said.
“The level of requests fluctuates, sometimes depending on the situation in areas of Gaza – if there are hostilities close to large numbers of people, or evacuation instructions issued, our hotline operators receive more calls with tracing requests in the hours and days that follow.
“Unfortunately, in such chaotic situations, people can be separated easily. People are panicked, sometimes it is dark and difficult to see, if there are explosions nearby people flee and lose one another.”
Since 7 October, the ICRC has reported more than 8,700 missing Palestinians in Gaza and has engaged with 7,429 Palestinian families to gather information.
About 2,300 cases have been resolved, meaning families have found their relatives, either alive or dead, the ICRC reported.
At least 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive since October, the Gazan health ministry said. It does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but officials say most of the dead throughout the war have been civilians.
Israel said it has lost 326 soldiers in Gaza and says at least a third of the Palestinian fatalities are fighters. The Hamas attack inside Israel on 7 October killed around 1,100 people, mostly civilians, while another 250 were taken hostage into Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
