At least 5,087 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since October 7, including 2,055 children, said the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry on Monday as the bombardment on the besieged enclave intensified.
The ministry also put the death toll in the past 24 hours at 436, including 182 children, adding that most of the fatalities had occurred in the southern Gaza Strip, to where Israel’s military has ordered Palestinians to evacuate.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Thousands of buildings have been destroyed and more than one million people displaced in the territory that has been under siege and largely deprived of water, food and other basic supplies.
Fighting raged unabated overnight after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed again that Israel would “erase Hamas” and as a full-scale ground invasion loomed.
Gaza’s Hamas-controlled government media office said that “more than 60 were martyred in the raids” during the night, including 17 in a single strike that hit a house in Gaza’s north and at least 10 others were killed in new strikes early Monday.
The Israeli military said it had hit “over 320 military targets in the Gaza Strip” in the past 24 hours.
A third aid convoy entered the Rafah crossing from Egypt on Monday as EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg were debating whether to call for a humanitarian ceasefire to enable more aid into Gaza.
The United States, which has brokered the entry of the aid convoys, has vowed a “continued flow” of relief goods into Gaza, even as UN aid agencies have said far more is needed.
