GAZA: The war raging in Gaza entered its fourth month on Sunday as the Israeli army again pounded the besieged Palestinian territory.
Israeli airstrikes overnight and early Sunday killed at least 64 people in the Palestinian territory, said its health ministry.
Israeli bombardment claimed other civilian lives in the southern city of Khan Yunis and in the Rafah area near the Egyptian border, where many of the territory's displaced people have sought refuge, correspondents reported.
Relatives were mourning the dead at Khan Yunis' European Hospital, among them Mohamed Awad, who wept over the body of a 12-year-old boy and listed other family members killed.
"My brother, his wife, his children, his relatives and the brothers of his wife -- there are more than 20 martyrs," he said.
The Israeli army reported that its forces had killed more of Palestinian groups in central Gaza, including in a drone strike in the Bureij refugee camp, a built-up urban area.
The military added it had disabled dozens of rocket launchers at a compound in northern Gaza's Beit Lahia area, from where Palestinians have been targeting southern Israel.
Israel is carrying out a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that have killed at least 22,722 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza health ministry.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed again that Israel would continue its campaign to "eliminate Hamas, return our captives and ensure that Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel".
Families and friends of the captives again rallied in Tel Aviv late Saturday, demanding steps leading to their release but many also voicing anger at his government.
The Netanyahu government is "ruining Israel and they are destroying everything we hoped and dreamed of," one demonstrator, Shachaf Netzer said.
On Israel's tense northern border with Lebanon, on Saturday said it had fired 62 rockets at an Israeli military base, days after a strike in Beirut killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Aruri.
A US Defense Department official said that Israel carried out the strike that killed Aruri.
The Israeli military said it had struck "military sites" in response to the rocket barrage, while army spokesman Daniel Hagari warned the armed group against "dragging Lebanon into an unnecessary war".
Civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the conflict that has reduced swathes of the coastal territory to rubble and triggered a deepening humanitarian crisis.
"Gaza has simply become uninhabitable," UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said. — AFP
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