Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli troops fighting in the Gaza Strip on Monday, vowing to stay the course of the war even with the death toll mounting. His trip came hours after health officials in Gaza reported that a devastating overnight strike on a crowded neighborhood had killed dozens.

The trip was the Israeli leader’s second known visit to Gaza since the war began. Netanyahu has been facing increasing pressure from the US to lower the intensity of the war, but he said Monday that Israel would “deepen” the fighting in the coming days.

The strike late on Sunday in central Gaza underscored the risk to civilians as fighting intensifies. Gaza residents were mourning the victims in the neighborhood, Al Maghazi, where many who have fled fighting in other parts of the enclave have sought shelter.

Photos of the aftermath on Monday showed a grey concrete building gaping with dark holes where rooms used to be. At the foot of the building was a mound of debris, where men appeared to be digging for survivors, or bodies, without the aid of any heavy equipment.

The Gaza health ministry said 70 people had died in Sunday’s attacks on Al Maghazi. But the ongoing difficulty of reaching residents in Gaza, where electricity shortages and communications blackouts have frequently obscured the picture of the war’s fallout, meant the details were blurry.

As the death toll in Gaza has soared and civilians have been pushed into smaller and smaller corners of the enclave, international calls for a cease-fire have grown. While Netanyahu’s government has said it is planning for a new phase of the fighting, the Israeli leader has repeatedly insisted that his military would keep up the war in Gaza until all of its goals were achieved.

“We’re not stopping; we are continuing to fight and are deepening the fighting in the coming days,” he said in a statement released by his Likud Party on Monday, adding that “this will be a long battle, and it is not close to ending”.

Gaza health ministry officials blamed Israeli airstrikes for the deadly attack on the Al Maghazi neighbourhood of central Gaza. Israel’s military said on Monday it was reviewing the episode.

Israeli forces are pushing deeper into central Gaza while also continuing to battle Hamas fighters in the enclave’s north and south. Many places in central and southern Gaza are crowded with people who have fled their homes.

“These rockets, it’s like they’re made to destroy mountains, not people,” said Mohamed Abu Shaah, who had taken shelter at an acquaintance’s house in Al Maghazi with his wife and seven daughters. In Al Maghazi, he said, the influx of the newly displaced meant that 20 people were routinely crowding into a single room to sleep at night.

It was the fifth time his own family had packed up and rushed to a new place after fighting and airstrikes threatened the place where they had taken shelter.

New York Times News Service