The strikes destroyed several buildings of the Hamas-linked Islamic University in Gaza City, a university official said.
In announcing Israel’s latest death toll on Wednesday morning, army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said the figure was rising not because of the ongoing fighting, but because “we are discovering bodies of dead Israelis in the various communities that Hamas infiltrated and where they conducted their massacres”.
The death toll from five days of ferocious fighting between Hamas and Israel rose sharply overnight as Israel kept up its bombardment of Gaza Wednesday after recovering the dead from the last communities near the border where Palestinian militants had been holed up.
In Israel, the death toll from Saturday’s shock cross-border assault by Hamas militants rose to 1,200, making it the deadliest attack in the country’s 75-year history, while Gaza officials reported more than 900 people killed as Israel pounded the territory with air strikes.
Hamas said two of its top officials had been killed, while Israel’s military said the bodies of roughly 1,500 Hamas infiltrators had been found.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israel’s military response to Saturday’s attack is only the start of a sustained war to destroy the Islamist group and “change the Middle East”.
Fears of a regional conflagration have surged ahead of an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza.
At least 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded as Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with hundreds of air strikes overnight, a Hamas government official said Wednesday
