An Israeli air strike hit the home of a doctor in Gaza killing nine of her 10 children, according to the director of the Hamas-run health ministry.
Dr Alaa al-Najjar's husband, Hamdi al-Najjar, who is also a doctor, is said to be in a critical condition while her one surviving son Adam is seriously injured.
Victoria Rose, a British plastic surgeon working at Nasser Hospital, confirmed the details to RTÉ News.
Director of the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry Dr Muneer Alboursh posted verified graphic images showing the aftermath of the strike on the home in Khan Younis, where the bodies of a number of small children were retrieved from a burning building.
Dr Alboursh said nine of Dr Al-Najjar's children were killed while she was working at Nasser Hospital.
Asked about the incident, the Israeli military said it had "struck a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure" near its troops.
"The Khan Yunis area is a dangerous warzone," it added. "The claim regarding harm to uninvolved civilians is under review."
The army had issued an evacuation warning for Khan Yunis on Monday.
The children's funeral took place at Nasser Hospital, AFP footage showed.
Samah Al-Najjar, a niece of Hamdi Al-Najjar describes what happened during the Israeli attack
Earlier, Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 15 people across the Palestinian territory, where Israel has ramped up its military offensive in recent days.
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the dead included a couple who were killed with their two young children in a pre-dawn strike on a house in the Amal quarter of the southern city of Khan Yunis.
To the west of the city, at least five people were killed by a drone strike on a crowd of people that had gathered to wait for aid trucks, he said.
The Israeli military said it was unable to comment on individual strikes without their "precise geographical coordinates".
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In a statement, the military said that over the past day the air force had struck more than 100 targets across the territory, including members of "terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip, military structures, underground routes and additional terrorist infrastructure".
Israel resumed operations in Gaza on 18 March, ending a two-month ceasefire.
Gaza's health ministry said today that at least 3,747 people had been killed in the territory since then, taking the war's overall toll to 53,901, mostly civilians.
Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
United Nations chief António Guterres said yesterday that Palestinians were enduring "the cruellest phase" of the war in Gaza, where a lengthy Israeli blockade has led to widespread shortages of food and medicine.
Limited aid deliveries to Gaza restarted on Monday for the first time since 2 March, amid mounting condemnation of the Israeli blockade.
The World Food Programme said 15 of its trucks were looted late Thursday night, calling on Israel "to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster".
"Hunger, desperation, and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming, is contributing to rising insecurity," it said.
The Gaza City municipality, meanwhile, warned Saturday of "a potential large-scale water crisis" due to a lack of supplies needed for urgent repairs.
It said damage from the war had "affected the majority of Gaza's water infrastructure, leaving large portions of the population vulnerable to severe water shortages".
It added that temperatures were rising and demand was expected to increase.
'Systematic' destruction
Yesterday, WHO Emergencies Director Michael Ryan said that 2.1 million people in Gaza were "in imminent danger of death".
"We need to end the starvation, we need to release all hostages and we need to resupply and bring the health system back online," he said.
"All hostages should be released. Their families are suffering. Their families are in pain," he added.
The WHO said Gazans were suffering acute shortages of food, water, medical supplies, fuel and shelter.
Four major hospitals have had to suspend medical services in the past week, due to their proximity to hostilities or evacuation zones, and attacks.
Only 19 of Gaza's 36 hospitals remain operational, with staff working in "impossible conditions", the UN health agency said in a statement.
"At least 94% of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip are damaged or destroyed," it said, while north Gaza "has been stripped of nearly all health care".
It said that across the Palestinian territory, only 2,000 hospital beds remained available - a figure "grossly insufficient to meet the current needs".
"The destruction is systematic. Hospitals are rehabilitated and resupplied, only to be exposed to hostilities or attacked again. This destructive cycle must end," it added.
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Additional reporting: AFP
