Fighting saw four members of one family killed when an air strike hit their house in Gaza City’s Al-Daraj area, in the territory’s north, AFP quotes Al-Ahli hospital medics as stating.

Israeli helicopters were also firing east of the Bureij camp, near Nuseirat, witnesses told AFP. And heavy artillery shelling hit central and northern areas of Rafah, said officials in the southern city.

“We will continue to act with determination and strength, in accordance with our right to self-defence, until all of the hostages are freed and Hamas is defeated,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said.

Seeking to explain the civilian toll and damage from the Nuseirat raid, Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner told US network ABC that forces “came under fire from a 360-degree threat… It was and is a war zone”.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell welcomed the hostage release and said reports “of another massacre of civilians are appalling… the bloodbath must end immediately”.