Gaza’s civil defence agency has now said that a series of Israeli air strikes killed at least 37 people, most of them in encampments for displaced civilians, AFP reports.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said two Israeli missiles hit several tents in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Younis, resulting in at least 16 deaths, “most of them women and children, and 23 others were wounded”.

“We were sitting peacefully in the tent, under God’s protection, when we suddenly saw something red glowing — and then the tent exploded, and the surrounding tents caught fire,” Israa Abu al-Rus told AFP.

Bassal said that Israeli strikes on two other encampments of displaced Gazans killed a further nine people — seven in the northern town of Beit Lahia, and a father and son near Al-Mawasi.

Separately, the civil defence agency reported two more attacks on displaced people in Jabalia — one that killed at least seven members of the Asaliya family, and another that killed three people at a school being used as a shelter. It added that two people were killed by Israeli shelling in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City.