At least 59 people, including children, have been killed in a barrage of Israeli attacks across the besieged Gaza Strip, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

Rescue teams and medics in the enclave said at least 12 people belonging to the same family were among those killed on Thursday when their home in northern Gaza’s Jabalia was targeted.

Six members of another family – a couple and their four children – were killed when an air strike levelled their home in Gaza City, the civil defence said in a statement.

Ahmed Arar, a first responder in Gaza City, said there were “large quantities of body parts and remains”, including those of many children, after the attack.

“There are only hands, legs, and heads. They are all severed and torn,” Arar told Al Jazeera.

Another 10 people were killed and several others wounded in a strike on a former police station in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, according to a statement from the Indonesian Hospital, where the casualties were taken.

“Everyone started running and screaming, not knowing what to do from the horror and severity of the bombing,” 23-year-old Abdel Qader Sabah, from Jabalia, said of the attack that hit the station that is located near a market.

Israel’s military said it struck what it described as a Hamas “command and control centre” in the Jabalia area, without clarifying if it was targeting the police station. The army has previously used similar justifications in attacks that hit hospitals and numerous shelters housing displaced Palestinian families.

At least 26 people were killed in other Israeli attacks across the territory, according to medics and the civil defence agency.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said there is “an ongoing surge in the rate of Israeli attacks on the entire Gaza Strip”.

He said that civil defence crews are still working to dig through the rubble at the scene of the latest attack in Jabalia.

He cited one rescue worker as saying many of the victims have sustained burn wounds.

‘Larger’ offensive?

Israel resumed its military assault on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire that had brought a temporary halt to fighting in the blockaded territory.

The military is continuing to seal vital border crossings for the eighth week in a row, denying the entry of much-needed humanitarian aid, including medical supplies and fuel, worsening an already deep humanitarian crisis amid relentless bombardment.

Israel’s army chief, visiting troops in Gaza on Thursday, threatened a “larger” offensive if captives seized in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, are not freed.

“If we do not see progress in the return of the hostages in the near future, we will expand our activities to a larger and more significant operation,” Eyal Zamir said.

The Israeli military, meanwhile, ordered Palestinians living in the northern areas of Beit Hanoon and Sheikh Zeid to evacuate in advance of an attack.

The United Nations has warned that Israel’s expanding evacuation orders across Gaza are resulting in the “forcible transfer” of people into ever-shrinking areas.

Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began.

Also on Thursday, the Gaza Health Ministry said the Durra Children’s Hospital in Gaza City had become nonoperational, a day after an Israeli strike hit the upper part of the building, damaging the intensive care unit and destroying the facility’s solar power panel system.

Gaza’s health system has been devastated by Israel’s 18-month-old military campaign, putting many of the territory’s hospitals out of action, killing medics, and reducing crucial supplies.

Efforts by key mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have so far failed to produce a lasting ceasefire.

Since Israel resumed its assault, at least 1,978 people have been killed in Gaza, raising the overall death toll to at least 51,355 since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The military said Thursday that Israeli tank fire killed a UN worker in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah last month, according to an investigation’s initial findings.

It had initially denied operating in the area where a Bulgarian employee of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) was killed on March 19.

The findings come after the military on Sunday reported on a separate probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers in Gaza.

It finally admitted that operational failures led to their deaths, and said a field commander would be dismissed.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas says keeping the captives provides Israel with justification for its attacks on Gaza.

Hamas has condemned remarks made by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who urged the Palestinian group ruling Gaza to release Israeli captives and lay down arms.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said on Thursday that Abbas’s remarks made a day earlier were “insulting”.

“Abbas repeatedly and suspiciously lays the blame for the crimes of the occupation and its ongoing aggression on our people,” he said.

Abbas on Wednesday urged Hamas to free all captives, saying keeping them provided Israel with “excuses” to attack Gaza.

“Hamas has given the criminal occupation excuses to commit its crimes in the Gaza Strip, the most prominent being the holding of hostages,” Abbas said at a meeting in Ramallah, the PA’s seat in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“I’m the one paying the price, our people are paying the price, not Israel. My brother, just hand them over.”

“Every day there are deaths,” Abbas said. “You sons of dogs, hand over what you have and get us out of this” ordeal, he added, levelling a harsh Arabic epithet at Hamas.

Long rift

There have been deep political and ideological divisions between Abbas’s Fatah party and Hamas for nearly 20 years.

Abbas and the PA have often accused Hamas of undermining Palestinian unity, while Hamas has criticised the former for collaborating with Israel and cracking down on West Bank dissent.

The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, which split from Abbas’s Fatah in the 2000s, issued a statement on Telegram on Wednesday condemning Abbas’s remarks.

“We strongly condemn the offensive statements made by President Abbas during the Central Council meeting regarding the resistance and our people’s resistance fighters, disregarding the sacrifices and struggle of our people and ignoring the suffering and ongoing sacrifices of the prisoners,” read the statement.

“We condemn the PA leadership’s continued pursuit of this discourse, which criminalizes the resistance and absolves the occupation of its ongoing crimes against our people for decades, especially the genocidal war against Gaza, the annexation and Judaization of the West Bank and Jerusalem, and the severe suffering endured by our valiant prisoners.”

The movement also called on Abbas to issue an apology for his remarks.

“We call on the President of the Palestinian Authority to apologize for this offensive speech and reverse all steps that reinforce division and align with Zionist will. We call on him to return to the embrace of the people and their choices and to cease pursuing the absurd path of surrender and compromise.”

Since Israel’s campaign in Gaza resumed on March 18, at least 1,928 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the total death toll since the war erupted to at least 51,305, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.

Talks on a new ceasefire have so far been fruitless, and a Hamas delegation is in Cairo for renewed negotiations with Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

Many women and children among 13 killed in the latest Israeli aerial attacks across Gaza.

Israel has maintained an eight-week blockade on food, medicine and aid entering Gaza, while continuing aerial attacks on homes and tent shelters – deepening what the United Nations describes as the war’s “worst humanitarian crisis”.

Overnight and early Thursday morning, at least 13 people were killed in Israeli attacks, according to Al Jazeera correspondents. Among the dead were three children in a tent near Nuseirat in central Gaza, and a woman and four children in a home in Gaza City.

Also reportedly killed in a recent attack was local journalist Saeed Abu Hassanein, whose death adds to at least 232 slain reporters in Gaza during the war.

“The Gaza Strip is witnessing a clear military escalation and a soaring humanitarian crisis,” reported Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah. He noted that rescuers, with much of their equipment damaged or destroyed, are increasingly struggling to reach victims trapped under wreckage.

The communication centre of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the occupied West Bank, said there was “no pause”, “no mercy”, “no humanity” to Israel’s attacks.

The statement accompanied video footage showing an Israeli tank moving through the apparent remains of the Shaboura refugee camp in southern Gaza.

“In Shaboura refugee camp, as in every other corner in Gaza, the devastation never ends,” the centre said.

‘Dismantling’ Palestinian life

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is compounded by Israel’s continued aid blockade, which the acting head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has described as a seeming “deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life”.

“The Gaza Strip is now likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the escalation of hostilities in October 2023,” said OCHA in its latest situation update on April 23.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health highlighted the “dangerous and catastrophic” toll on women and children facing malnutrition, with many lacking adequate food, drinking water and baby formula.

Israel’s continued refusal to let aid into Gaza defies a World Court order dating back to May 2024 for it to urgently facilitate aid into the enclave to prevent famine and starvation.