Israeli forces have pounded central Gaza, a day after killing 274 Palestinians during a hostage rescue raid, and tanks advanced into further into Rafah in an apparent bid to seal off part of the southern city, residents and Hamas media said.
Palestinians remained in shock over yesterday's death toll, the worst over a 24-hour period of the Gaza war for months and including many women and children, Palestinian medics said.
In an update, Gaza's health ministry said 274 Palestinians were killed - up from 210 it reported yesterday - and 698 were injured when Israeli special force commandos entered the densely populated Al-Nuseirat camp to rescue four hostages held since October by Hamas militants.
Of the dead, 64 were children and 57 were women, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.
Israel's military said a special forces officer was killed in exchanges of fire with militants emerging from cover in residential blocks, and that it knew of "under 100" Palestinians killed, though not how many of them were fighters or civilians.
Hamas' armed wing said three Israeli hostages, including one with US citizenship, were killed during the raid, but provided no names.
It released a video of what appeared to be corpses with censor bars obscuring their faces.
A Hamas assertion yesterday that some hostages had died was rejected as "a blatant lie" by the Israeli military.
Gaza's health ministry said another 798 Palestinians were injured in the Israeli raid, and one of them, 4-year-old Tawfiq Abu Youssef, was in critical condition when visited in hospital by his father Raed.
The boy was first thought to have died before he moved his hand slightly while in the arms of a relative rushing him to hospital - captured in a video that went viral on social media.
"I had already dug his grave," his father told Reuters, adding that most members of his extended family were among those killed in the raid.
Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Zget
iv, 41, had been abducted from the Nova music festival during Hamas's 7 October attack.
Many Israelis shed tears of joy when they heard of the release of the four captives, all reported in good health.
The army released footage of the freed captives embracing their family members, and the government press office showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting them in hospital.
More airstrikes in central Gaza
In central Gaza, separate Israeli airstrikes on houses in the city of Deir Al-Balah and in nearby Al-Bureij killed three Palestinians in each location as tanks shelled parts of Al-Nuseirat and Al-Maghazi, medics said.
Al-Maghazi, Al-Nuseirat and Al-Bureij are historic, urbanised refugee camps often caught up in the current war.
The Israeli military said in a statement its forces were continuing operations east of Al-Bureij and Deir al-Balah, killing a number of Palestinian gunmen and destroying militant infrastructure.
Israel sent forces into Rafah in May in what it called a mission to wipe out Hamas' 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 militants embedded in crowded cities and built-up camps.
Israeli tank forces have since seized Gaza's entire border strip with Egypt running through Rafah to the Mediterranean coast and invaded many districts of the city of 280,000 residents, prompting around one million displaced people who had been sheltering in Rafah to flee elsewhere.
Israeli tanks advance further in Rafah
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.
As of 5 June, 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.
"All 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)," UNRWA said in a statement.
Palestinian medics said an Israeli airstrike on a house in Tel Al-Sultan in western Rafah killed two people.
The Israeli military said troops of its 162nd division were raiding some districts of Rafah where they had located "numerous additional terror tunnel shafts, mortars, and (other) weapons" belonging to Palestinian Islamist militants.
Hamas precipitated the war with a cross-border attack into Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and seizing over 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
About half the hostages were freed during a brief November truce.
Israel's army meanwhile said a senior commander had resigned over what he called his failure to prevent the 7 October attack.
"The commander of the 143rd Division, Brigadier General Avi Rosenfeld, informed his commanders today of his intention to end his service in the (Israeli army)," said a statement by the military.
"The officer will finish his duties in the near future."
M Rosenfeld wrote in a resignation letter released by the army: "Everyone has to take responsibility for their part, and I am the one responsible in Division 143."
"On October 7, I failed my life's mission: to protect the envelope," he wrote, referring to the southern Israeli communities on the border with Gaza.
37,084 Palestinians killed during war - health ministry
Israel's ensuing air and ground war in Gaza has killed at least 37,084 Palestinians, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said.
The ministry says thousands more dead are feared buried under the rubble.
Attempts 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.
A humanitarian crisis has unfolded as the war has dragged on, with over three-quarters of Gaza's 2.3 million population displaced, malnutrition widespread and basic infrastructure in ruins.
Gaza's conflict has destabilised the wider Middle East, drawing in Hamas' main supporter Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, which has been clashing with Israel along its northern border for months, raising fears of all-out war.
Concern about an escalation in Israeli-Hezbollah hostilities and a sharp decline in expectations of a Gaza ceasefire have weakened Israel's shekel currency by 3% to 3.75 to the dollar since June 4.
