A youth searches for survivors at the site of an Israeli strike that targeted Abu Samra’s  home in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza Strip, on Sunday 

Deir Al-Balah (Gaza Strip)

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes overnight and early Sunday  morning have killed at least 28 Palestinian people.  Civil agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an airstrike on a house in Deir al-Balah – a town in central Gaza – belonging to one Abu Samra family. Bassal said eight people, including four children, were killed in the attack on the Musa Bin Nusayr school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war. Bassal said an overnight Israeli airstrike killed three people in the southern city of Rafah, and a drone strike this morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, a report  from Guardian said.

There was no immediate comment from the military on those strikes. Israel has repeatedly claimed that it only targets militants, whom it accuses of hiding among civilians. But  the bombings frequently kill women and children. Israel has been carrying out a major operations in northern Gaza since early October, battling Hamas in the most isolated and heavily damaged part of the territory. 

Tens of thousands have fled as the military has ordered a complete evacuation and allowed almost no humanitarian aid to enter. Israeli authorities allowed Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the leader of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, to enter Gaza and celebrate a pre-Christmas Mass with members of the territory's small Christian community. The Latin Patriarchate confirmed the visit in a brief statement.