Inside a Gaza hospital as rescuers say 50 killed in Israeli strikes overnight

Residents say they were gripped with 'fear and panic' in the middle of the night

Gaza's civil defence agency said Friday that 50 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the Palestinian territory since midnight.

"The number of martyrs killed in Israeli shelling targeting civilian homes in the northern Gaza Strip between midnight and early this morning has risen to 50... Our teams are still working in those areas," civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told AFP.

A doctor at the Indonesian Hospital in the northern city of Beit Lahia, who requested anonymity, told AFP that 30 dead and dozens of wounded, mostly children and women, had arrived at the hospital.

Mohammed Saleh, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, told AFP that the hospital had received five dead and "more than 75 injured" as a result of the bombardment.

Warning: Death and suffering throughout. Mourning at a Gaza hospital following air strikes. Video: AFP

"The Israeli occupation bombed the house next to mine, hitting it directly while its residents were inside," Yousef Al-Sultan, 40, from the al-Salatin area, west of Beit Lahia, told AFP, reporting "air strikes, artillery shelling and gunfire from quadcopter drones."

"There is a massive wave of displacement among civilians. Fear and panic grip us in the middle of the night," he said.

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