“It has been relatively calm here in the central areas during the past hour. But the escalation continues to take place in the north of the Gaza Strip,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reports from Deir el-Balah, Gaza.

“We got reports coming from the town of Jabalia al-Balad confirming that Israeli quadcopter drones have been shooting civilians there.

“We saw earlier different videos emerging from the Israeli side showing how those quadcopter drones are equipped with grenades and even explosives that could be dropped on the rooftops of buildings, which can, in turn cause significant destruction in a residential building,” he said.

Earlier today, the Israeli military levelled to the ground residential buildings in the Sabra neighbourhood, killing at least four civilians.

Military operations are also still ongoing in the north, in particular in the town of Beit Lahiya with military confrontations there and in Jabalia between Palestinian groups and Israeli forces continuing to escalate, he added.