At least 70 Palestinians were killed to Israeli military airstrikes overnight in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas government announced today.

“Over 60 witnesses were killed in the raids” during the night of Sunday to today Monday, reports the press office of Hamas.

According to it, one of the strikes killed 17 people in a house in Jambaliya, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, while another 25 people were killed in the raids in the central sector of the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas Health Ministry also confirmed that “at least ten bodies were recovered from the ruins”following a raid that destroyed a house this morning in Deir al-Balah, in the central part.

According to the Hamas government’s total tally released yesterday, before these new strikes, more than 4,600 people, the vast majority of them civilians, including nearly 1,900 children, have lost their lives since the start of the war in the small Palestinian enclave.

On Saturday, the Israeli army announced that the strikes would intensify. Today it announced that it had hit “more than 320 military targets” overnight, infrastructure belonging to Hamas, which is in power in the Gaza Strip, and its allied Islamic Jihad group.

The Israeli military referred to “tunnels where Hamas terrorists were located”, “dozens of operational command centers, where sometimes” men of Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad were hiding, “camps and observation posts”. Israel is convinced that Hamas runs its operations from a vast underground network of galleries.

The bombing campaign launched on October 7 by Israel is a prelude to a possible ground operation by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army announced yesterday the death of one of its soldiers during an infiltration of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has vowed to “wipe out” Hamas — designated a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and Israel — after its unprecedented October 7 attack on Israeli soil that left 1,400 dead, mostly citizens.