Israeli airstrikes on Christmas Day kill at least 100 people as Netanyahu vows to expand campaign

Gaza health ministry spokesperson calls Israeli airstrike at refugee camp ‘massacre being committed on crowded residential square’

At least 70 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Christmas Eve in al-Maghazi refugee camp in the centre of Gaza, Palestinian authorities in the besieged strip said.

Another 23 people were killed in an Israeli assault on Khan Younis, bringing the total number of deaths overnight to more than 100, marking the date as one of the deadliest so far in the conflict.

The Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry said that at least 12 women and seven children were among those who died in a late-night strike that destroyed several homes in the refugee camp.

Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesperson for the health ministry, called the airstrike a “massacre”, adding that the death toll was likely to climb.

Palestinians search for bodies and survivors in the rubble of the destroyed house of the Manasra family following an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip on Christmas Day (EPA)

Footage from the camp showed dozens of injured people, including children, being rushed to nearby al-Aqsa Hospital, while some of the bodies were piled outside in body bags.

It comes as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israel will expand its Gaza ground offensive in the coming days despite international efforts to halt the fighting.

Speaking to members of his Likud Party on Monday, Mr Netanyahu said the war “isn’t close to finished”.

Mr Netanyahu spoke after returning from a visit to meet troops fighting inside Gaza. “We are not stopping. We are continuing to fight and we are expanding the fight in the coming days,” Mr Netanyahu said. “This will be a long battle, and it isn’t close to finished.”

His comments came after Egypt floated an ambitious proposal to end the Israel-Hamas war involving a phased hostage release and the creation of a Palestinian government of experts who would administer the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, a senior Egyptian official and a European diplomat said on Monday.

Meanwhile, on the ground a father who lost his daughter and grandchildren in the strike told the BBC that the family had fled from the north to seek safety in central Gaza.

At least 70 people are believed to have been killed in the attack, Palestinian authorities say (EPA)

“They lived on the third floor of one of the buildings,” he said, adding that the walls had collapsed on them. “My grandchildren, my daughter, her husband – all gone.

“We are all targeted. Civilians are targeted. There is no safe place. They told us to leave Gaza City – now we came to central Gaza to die,” the man told the broadcaster.

The Israeli military said it was reviewing the incident.

An aerial shot showing the scale of the damage (Reuters)

The Palestinian health ministry said that another 10 members of one family had been killed in an Israeli strike on their house in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza.

On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike killed 76 members of an extended family, rescue officials said, as the Israel-Hamas war continued into its 12th week.

The Israeli military said it was investigating the incidents (EPA)

Israel said it had lost 14 soldiers amid intense fighting in the Gaza Strip over the weekend. The Israeli military suffered losses in central and southern Gaza as its forces battled Hamas militants in “close-quarters combat” in Khan Younis near the territory’s border with Egypt.

Christmas celebrations were cancelled in Bethlehem, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank city that is known for being the biblical birthplace of Jesus.

“Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world,” Pope Francis said at Christmas Eve mass in Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica.