The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency said the Israeli military operation had included an incursion by ground troops and airstrikes.
Israeli forces stepped up their attacks on the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday, killing scores of people at several schools and homes across the enclave and at an orphanage sheltering displaced civilians, local officials and the Gaza Health Ministry said.
An Israeli military operation that began in several parts of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, early on Wednesday morning killed at least 51 people and injured 82 by midafternoon, the Health Ministry said. Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said that the operation had included an incursion by Israeli ground troops as well as intense airstrikes, and that several women and children were among the dead.
In the north, near Gaza City, at least eight people were killed and several others injured by Israeli bombardment of an orphanage building owned by al-Amal Institute for Orphans where hundreds of displaced civilians were staying, the institute said in a statement. A majority of those sheltering in the building, which was heavily damaged by the attack, were women and children, the institute said.
And across the enclave, the Israeli military said it had bombed four school buildings during the day. The strikes killed at least 17 people at a school east of Gaza City, and at least five people at a school sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, the Palestinian Civil Defense said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the locations of the other two schools. The military said, without providing evidence, that all four schools were being used as Hamas command and control centers — a claim it has repeatedly made to justify increasingly frequent strikes on school buildings in Gaza.
The strikes on the schools and orphanage on Wednesday were condemned by the French Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement that the Israeli forces had “repeatedly targeted civilian infrastructure where people are seeking refuge.” Action on Armed Violence, an advocacy group that focuses on the effect that conflict has on civilians, said in a new analysis on Tuesday that, on average, explosive Israeli weapons had hit civilian infrastructure in Gaza every three hours since the war began.
Anushka Patil is a Times reporter covering breaking and developing news around the world. More about Anushka Patil
