According to Gaza government media office 64 of the dead were children and 57 were women
\n GAZA\/JERUSALEM
\nIsraeli forces pounded central Gaza anew on Sunday, a day after killing 274 Palestinians during a hostage rescue raid, and tanks advanced into further areas of Rafah in an apparent bid to seal off part of the southern city, residents and Hamas media said.
\nPalestinians remained in shock over Saturday\u2019s death toll, the worst over a 24-hour period of the Gaza war for months and including many women and children, Palestinian medics said.
\nIn an update on Sunday, Gaza\u2019s health ministry said 274 Palestinians were killed\u2013up from 210 it reported on Saturday\u2013and 698 were injured when Israeli special force commandos stormed into the densely populated Al-Nuseirat camp to rescue four hostages held since October by Hamas fighters.
\nSixty-four of the dead were children and 57 were women, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Sunday.
\nIsrael\u2019s military said a special forces officer was killed in exchanges of fire with fighters emerging from cover in residential blocks, and that it knew of \u201cunder 100\u201d Palestinians killed, though not how many of them were fighters or civilians.
\nOn Sunday, three Palestinians were killed and several hurt in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Al-Bureij in the central Gaza Strip, while tanks shelled parts of nearby Al-Maghazi and Al-Nuseirat. All are built-up, historic refugee camps.
\nThe Israeli military said in a statement its forces were continuing operations east of Bureij and the city of Deir al-Balah in the centre of the coastal enclave, killing several Palestinian gunmen and destroying resistance infrastructure.
\nIsrael sent forces into Rafah in May in what it called a mission to wipe out Hamas\u2019 last intact combat units after eight months of war, in which Israeli forces have bombed much of the rest of Gaza to rubble while advancing against fierce resistance from fighters embedded in crowded cities and built-up camps.
\nIsraeli tank forces have since seized Gaza\u2019s entire border strip with Egypt running through Rafah to the Mediterranean coast and invaded several districts of the city, prompting around one million displaced people who had been sheltering in Rafah to flee elsewhere.
\nIsraeli tanks advance further in Rafah
\nOn Sunday, tanks advanced into two new districts in an apparent effort to complete the encirclement of the entire eastern side of Rafah, touching off clashes with dug-in Hamas-led armed groups, according to residents trapped in their homes.
\nAs of June 5, all but around 100,000 displaced people who took refuge in eastern Rafah after taking flight from Israeli offensives further north in Gaza had left, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.
\n\u201cAll UNRWA shelters in Rafah have been vacated. Many of the people who were based in Rafah have fled up the coast seeking safer locations in both Khan Younis and the middle area (of Gaza),\u201d UNRWA said in a statement.
\nPalestinian medics said an Israeli airstrike on a house in Tel Al-Sultan in western Rafah killed two people.
\nThe Israeli military said troops of its 162nd division were raiding some districts of Rafah where they had located \u201cnumerous additional terror tunnel shafts, mortars, and (other) weapons\u201d belonging to Palestinian fighters.
\nHamas precipitated the war with a lightning cross-border attack into Israel last Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing over 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
\nAbout half the hostages were freed during a brief November truce.
\nIsrael\u2019s ensuing air and ground war in Gaza has killed at least 37,084 Palestinians, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said in its Sunday update. The ministry says thousands more dead are feared buried under the rubble.
\nAttempts by the United States and regional countries to broker a deal that would release all remaining hostages in return for a ceasefire have repeatedly stumbled on Israeli and Hamas intransigence over terms for an end to the war.
\nGaza\u2019s conflict has destabilised the wider Middle East, drawing in Hamas\u2019 main backer Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah which has been clashing with Israel along its northern border for months, raising fears of all-out war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to Gaza government media office 64 of the dead were children and 57 were women GAZA\/JERUSALEM Israeli forces pounded central Gaza anew on Sunday, a day after killing 274 Palestinians during a hostage rescue raid, and tanks advanced into further areas of Rafah in an apparent bid to seal off part of the southern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-411926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n