At least 26 Palestinians, including eight children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, medical sources told Anadolu on Monday.
Several people were also injured in the attacks that targeted at least 11 houses in the city since Sunday evening, the sources said.
Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency said several people were still missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings.
The Israeli army issued immediate evacuation orders on Monday for Palestinians in the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah and called on them to move to the town of al-Mawasi in southern Gaza.
Around 100,000 Palestinian civilians are estimated to be living in the areas to be evacuated, according to Israeli Army Radio.
Rafah is home to more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians, who have taken refuge from the war launched by Israel following a Hamas attack last Oct. 7 that killed nearly 1,200 people.
Since then, the Israeli onslaught has killed more than 34,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, besides causing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Nearly seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January said it is "plausible" that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and ordered Tel Aviv to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians there.
11 Palestinians killed in two-day Israeli raid on West Bank
Meanwhile, AFP from Jenin, Palestinian Territories, reports; Israeli forces carried out raids in the West Bank city of Jenin for a second day Wednesday, an AFP correspondent reported, with at least 11 Palestinians killed in the fighting.
Smoke billowed over the city's refugee camp in the afternoon, with explosions and gunfire heard from inside, while soldiers in Israeli armoured vehicles fired at masked youths in the city centre, the correspondent said.
The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces had killed 11 people including four children, and wounded 25 during the fighting which began on Tuesday morning.
An AFP correspondent on Tuesday saw four bodies at Jenin's Khalil Suleiman government hospital morgue.
Israel's army said on Wednesday troops had "exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of terrorists, including two terrorists who threw explosives at the forces".
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders reported that surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from the government hospital, was among those killed on Tuesday.
A schoolteacher and a student were also among the dead, Wafa reported, quoting hospital director Wissam Bakr.
The Israeli army said it had raided the house of Ahmed Barakat, who was suspected of involvement in an attack on an Israeli civilian last year.
Meir Tamari, 32, was killed in May 2023 at the entrance to a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, medics and military officials said at the time.
Streets near the entrance to the Jenin camp were deserted on Wednesday afternoon, with drones buzzing overhead.
On the outskirts of the town, Israeli armoured vehicles were parked near a roundabout, while agricultural workers toiled on a farm across the road.
