Palestinian Territories – AFP

The death toll in Gaza now exceeds 10,000 after nearly one month of Israeli bombardment, the health ministry said Monday as the offensive against the Palestinian enclave showed signs of intensifying.

Hundreds of overnight strikes pushed the death toll to 10,022, mostly women and children, a spokesman for the health ministry told a press conference on Monday afternoon.

Two paediatric hospitals and Gaza’s only psychiatric hospital were hit, the ministry said, after the director of another hospital, the Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, reported he had counted 58 dead.

“These are massacres! They destroyed three houses over the heads of their inhabitants — women and children,” one resident, Mahmud Meshmesh, told AFP.

“We have already taken 40 bodies out of the rubble,” he said as crowds prayed around corpses wrapped in white shrouds.

Ground forces with tanks have flooded the northern half of the Gaza Strip and tightened an encirclement of Gaza City, effectively splitting the territory in two, even as hundreds of thousands of civilians remained in the north despite Israeli evacuation orders.

The heads of major United Nations agencies issued a joint statement calling for a ceasefire inside the territory of 2.4 million people where an Israeli siege has cut off most water, food and fuel supplies.

“For almost a month, the world has been watching the unfolding situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory in shock and horror at the spiralling numbers of lives lost and torn apart,” said the statement.

“We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now.”