An Israeli airstrike killed 76 members of an extended family in the Gaza Strip, rescue officials said on Saturday.
"Friday's strike on a building in Gaza City was among the deadliest of the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 12th week, said Mahmoud Bassal," a spokesman for Gaza's Civil Defense Department.
The official provided a partial list of the names of those killed — 16 heads of households from the al-Mughrabi family — and said the dead included women and children.
Among the dead were Issam al-Mughrabi, a veteran employee of the UN Development Program, his wife, and their five children.
“The loss of Issam and his family has deeply affected us all. The UN and civilians in Gaza are not a target,” said Achim Steiner, the head of the agency. “This war must end.”
More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's war to destroy Hamas and more than 53,000 have been wounded, according to health officials in Gaza.
Israel’s aerial and ground offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history, displacing nearly 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and leveling wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave.
More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report this week from the United Nations and other agencies.
The Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Friday that forces are widening the ground offensive “to additional areas of the strip, with a focus on the south.”
He said operations were also continuing in the northern half of Gaza, including Gaza City, the initial focus of Israel's ground offensive.
The army said Saturday that it carried out airstrikes against Hamas fighters in several locations of Gaza City.
The military says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, including about 2,000 in the past three weeks, but it has not presented any evidence to back up the claim. It says 139 of its soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive.
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