OVERNIGHT strikes by Israel killed at least 100 people across the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said.
The strikes on Thursday came a day after senior government officials said Israel would seize large areas of Gaza and establish a new security corridor across the Palestinian territory.
Reports suggest this brings the death toll to at least 130 Palestinians over the past 24 hours.
Israel has vowed to escalate the nearly 18-month war with Hamas until the militant group returns dozens of remaining hostages, disarms and leaves the territory.
Israel has imposed a month-long halt on all imports of food, fuel and humanitarian aid that has left civilians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle.
Officials in Khan Younis, in the southern part of the strip, said the bodies of 14 people had been taken to Nasser Hospital – nine of them from the same family.
The dead included five children and four women.
The bodies of another 19 people, including five children aged between one and seven-years-old and a pregnant woman, were taken to the European hospital near Khan Younis, hospital officials said.
In Gaza City, 21 bodies were taken to Ahli hospital, including those of seven children.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel was establishing a new security corridor across the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory.
Netanyahu referred to the new axis as the Morag corridor, using the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting it would run between the two southern cities.
He said it would be “a second Philadelphi corridor” referring to the Gaza side of the border with Egypt further south, which has been under Israeli control since last May.
Israel has reasserted control over the Netzarim corridor, also named for a former settlement, that cuts off the northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, from the rest of the narrow coastal strip.
Both of the existing corridors run from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea.
“We are cutting up the strip, and we are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages,” Netanyahu said.
It comes with Netanyahu visiting Hungary despite being sought under an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for alleged war crimes related to Israel's attacks on Gaza.
Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, has announced the country will be withdrawing from the ICC.
Netanyahu is in the country to meet with senior Hungarian officials.
The ICC has no police force but its 124 member states have the legal obligation to respect the court’s decisions and arrest Netanyahu if he steps foot on their soil.
However, the court has no means to enforce the warrants if member states don’t comply.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 50,423 Palestinians are confirmed dead and 114,638 wounded in Israel's war on Gaza.
At least 1139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks and more than 200 were taken captive.
