GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense said 26 people were killed on Sunday (17 November), including children, and at least 59 were missing after an Israeli airstrike hit a building in northern Palestinian territory.

Following the early Sunday strike, 26 bodies were pulled from the rubble of the five-story residential building in Beit Lahia, “including children and women,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

He added that at least 59 people are still trapped under the rubble.

AFP footage showed men covered in dust struggling to reach people under the rubble, while some of the bodies were taken away on a donkey cart.

Other AFP images showed the flattened building with broken concrete and twisted metal sticking out of the rubble, while several bodies covered in blankets lay nearby.

Hamas, which rules the territory, accused Israel of carrying out a “massacre” which it said was “a continuation of genocidal war and revenge against unarmed civilians”.

Earlier on Sunday, Gaza’s civil defense said other Israeli strikes killed at least 20 people, including four women and three children, in the war-torn territory.

Gaza’s Health Ministry, run by Hamas, said on Sunday that the total death toll was over 13 months of war it had reached 43,846.

Most of the dead are civilians, according to the ministry’s figures, which the United Nations considers reliable.

The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war left 1,206 people dead, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.