At least 29 Palestinians were killed and more than 50 others injured on Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike that hit a residential block in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, Hamas said.
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for Gaza Civil Defence, told Xinhua news agency that rescue teams were still searching for survivors and bodies trapped under the rubble.
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Palestinian security sources said the strike targeted eight adjacent homes, destroying the entire area with multiple missiles.
The Israeli military has not commented on the incident.
The airstrike came as health authorities in Gaza reported that hospitals had received 36 bodies and 41 injured individuals in the past 24 hours.
According to Gaza-based health officials, the number of Palestinians killed since Israel resumed military operations on March 18 has risen to 1,482, with 3,688 wounded.
In a separate incident in the central Gaza Strip, two Palestinians were killed and one injured when Israeli forces struck a residential house in the city of Nuseirat, Basal said.
In the south, an Israeli attack on a tent sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis killed an elderly man and a woman, he added.
Gaza’s Civil Defence warned that several victims remain trapped under debris or on the streets, unreachable by emergency teams due to ongoing hostilities, Xinhua news agency reported.
Earlier on April 3, at least 29 Palestinians were killed and more than 100 others injured in an Israeli attack on the Dar Al-Arqam school, east of Gaza City, the Hamas-run Gaza media office said.
The office stated that among the dead were 18 children, women, and elderly people.
Meanwhile, Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defence, told Xinhua that the school had been sheltering displaced families seeking refuge from continuous Israeli bombardment.
“The army attacked it while it was sheltering many displaced people,” he said, adding that emergency teams rushed to the scene, pulling bodies from the rubble and treating the wounded amid the destruction.
Locals said the Israeli army attacked the school with three missiles.
“The blast was massive. Many were killed instantly, and others are still trapped under the debris,” said Mohammed Alaa, a local resident.
Since the start of the Israeli military campaign on October 7, 2023, a total of 50,846 Palestinians have been killed and 115,729 wounded, according to Gaza health authorities.
