40 Palestinians killed in fresh Gaza blitz

Israeli forces stepped up airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 40 people, Palestinian medics said, in further battle with Hamas-led militants as Israel braced for potential wider war in the region.

Israeli airstrikes hit a cluster of houses in central Gaza's Al-Bureij camp, killing at least 15 people, and the nearby Al-Nuseirat camp, killed four, medics said. Nuseirat and Bureij are among the densely populated enclave's eight historic camps and seen by Israel as strongholds of armed militants.

Israeli aircraft also bombed a house in the heart of Gaza City in the north, killing five Palestinians, while another airstrike in the southern city of Khan Younis killed one person and wounded others, according to medics.

Later, 15 Palestinians were killed and 30 injured in Israeli bombings of two schools east of Gaza City, the territory's Civil Emergency Service said in a statement. Footage circulated on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed casualties being brought to a hospital on donkey carts.

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they were firing anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs at Israeli forces operating across Gaza, causing deaths and injuries among them. Israel's military said it had struck dozens of targets across Gaza over the past 24 hours, including rocket launching pads.

On October 7 last year, Hamas-led fighters launched a shock cross-border rampage into Israeli communities, killing 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and seizing some 250 hostages. Since then, at least 39,699 Palestinians have been killed, and 91,722 injured in Israel's air and ground war in Gaza.