Over 700 killed as Israel pounds Gaza, widens evacuation orders

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air raids in the past 24 hours in Gaza as the Israeli army ordered more areas in and around the enclave’s second-largest city of Khan Younis to evacuate.

The Director General of the Government Media Office in Gaza told Al Jazeera on Sunday that more than 700 Palestinians have been killed since Israel resumed bombardment after a seven-day truce ended on Friday.

More than 1.5 million people have been displaced, most of them from northern Gaza, since Israel launched a military offensive on October 7 in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack.

Overnight and into Sunday, intense bombing was reported in Khan Younis, Rafah, and some northern parts targeted by Israel’s air and ground attacks.

“Everywhere you turn to, there are children with third-degree burns, shrapnel wounds, brain injuries and broken bones,” James Elder, UNICEF’s global spokesperson, told Al Jazeera from Gaza.

“Mothers crying over children who look like they are hours away from death. It seems like a death zone right now.”

The main hospital in Khan Younis received at least three dead and dozens wounded on Sunday morning from an Israeli air raid that hit a residential building in the eastern part of the city, according to an Associated Press journalist at the hospital.

Separately, the bodies of 31 people killed in Israeli bombardment across the central areas of the strip were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza’s central city of Deir el-Balah, said Omar al-Darawi, an administrative employee at the hospital.

In northern Gaza, rescue teams with little equipment scrambled on Sunday to dig through the rubble of buildings in the Jabaliya refugee camp and other neighbourhoods in Gaza City in search of potential survivors and dead bodies.

Hopes of any future cessation in the fighting were dashed on Saturday when Israel announced it was pulling out negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, saying talks had reached an “impasse”.

Israel has said it is working to eliminate the armed Palestinian group Hamas, which launched deadly attacks on southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking more than 240 captives, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel has killed more than 15,200 Palestinians in Gaza attacks since October 7, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.