Israel bombed a residential building in northern Gaza in Beit Lahiya, killing 50 | Israel-Palestine Conflicts News

At least 50 people, a third of them children, were killed in an Israeli strike in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya, authorities said, as shelling hit the central and southern part of the besieged Palestinian territory.

The Government Press Office in Gaza on Sunday said that Israeli forces attacked a multi-storey building housing six Palestinian families who were forcibly evicted from Beit Lahiya.

Health Ministry Director-General Munir al-Bursh told Al Jazeera that about 30 percent of the victims of the Beit Lahiya “massacre” were children. He said a number of others were injured and many are feared to be trapped under the debris.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that emergency services could not reach the scene of the attack due to the Israeli siege of northern Gaza that has lasted for more than 40 days.

With reports of several people trapped under the debris, the death toll is likely to rise in the coming hours.

There was no immediate reaction from Israel, which has been killing people in the Palestinian territories for more than a year.

It was not the first time Israel hit Beit Lahiya, resulting in many casualties. Last month, soldiers attacked the home of the Abu Nasr family in the city, killing at least 93 people.

On Saturday, Israel also attacked the United Nations-run Abu Assi school in the Shati refugee camp, killing 10 Palestinians and injuring 20, including women and children.

Last month, the Israeli army deployed tanks to Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoon and Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip's eight refugee camps, in what it said was an anti-Hamas operation.

Israel said the operation killed hundreds of fighters in the three areas. But the Palestinian Authority says the attack killed many women, children and the elderly, and left tens of thousands starving without food, water or medical aid.

Earlier on Sunday, separate Israeli airstrikes killed at least 17 people in the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza.

Al Jazeera's Hind Khoudary, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said “the explosions did not stop” in the central parts of the Strip on Sunday morning.

“In Al-Aqsa Hospital, there are 17 Palestinians who died in the cold. People are waiting to bury but there is a shortage of coffins in the Gaza Strip,” he said.

“We saw mothers crying, saying goodbye to their loved ones,” said Khoudary, adding that most of the dead, including four children, were members of the same family.

In the southern Gaza city of Rafah, an Israeli bomb blast killed five Palestinians, according to our Al Jazeera Arabic partners.

The Ministry of Health said on Sunday that at least 43,846 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Transport in Palestine, Tariq Zourob, told representatives of private companies during a meeting of the Palestinian embassy in Cairo that, due to the Israeli attack, the damage to the transport and communication infrastructure in the whole area has reached $4.8bn.

At least 300,000 tons of “solid waste” are reported to be on the roads across the Gaza Strip, Zourob was quoted as saying by the Palestinian Wafa news agency on Sunday.