An airstrike on Thursday hit a house in the southern part of the Gaza Strip where people had sought shelter from Israel’s military offensive, according to a nearby hospital, which said that at least 18 people were killed and dozens of others injured.

The hospital, the Kuwait Specialty Hospital, said the strike had occurred in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost area, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled following Israeli military orders to move south.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions about the blast, and the circumstances could not be independently verified.

The strike came as Israeli forces intensified their offensive in southern Gaza against Hamas militants based in the territory. On Friday, the Israeli military said that it had carried out a series of attacks over the past day in Khan Younis, the biggest city in the south, using airstrikes, sniper fire and tank rounds, and that “dozens of terrorists” had been killed. Its accounts of the fighting could not be independently verified.

About 85 per cent of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been displaced, and those sheltering near the Kuwait hospital have hardly anywhere farther south to go. The hospital is less than a kilometre from Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Egypt is determined to keep closed. The city’s border crossing with Egypt is also the main entry point for aid into the territory. Israel has continued bombing areas it has told people to move to.

After Thursday’s strike, many who arrived at the Kuwait hospital had serious injuries, including head wounds and severed limbs, the hospital’s director, Dr Suhaib Al Hams, said in a video on social media.

News photos from the scene of the strike showed people pulling young children from the rubble. In one, a girl in colourful pajamas appeared limp as she was carried away.

New York Times News Service