March 19 (UPI) -- A second consecutive night of renewed airstrikes on Gaza killed at least 14 people and injured many more as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed the Israeli military's resumption of full-force combat was only "the beginning."
Two of the deaths occurred when an Israeli attack drone struck a tent near the al-Mawasi humanitarian strip, west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, a woman and a child were killed north of the city and four others were killed in northern Gaza in an airstrike on Gaza City.
Israel Defense Forces said the al-Mawasi incident was a legitimate pre-emptive strike on a Hamas site that the group was readying to fire rockets at targets in Israel.
It said it had also successfully targeted fishing vessels being used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their military operations.
Another airstrike killed two people and injured six other people in the town of Beit Hanoun in the north, according to officials from Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.
The office of the Hamas-run administration in Gaza said a foreign humanitarian worker was killed and five others were seriously injured in an attack on a U.N. facility in Deir el-Balah in the central area of the enclave, demanding an international probe into what it said was a deliberate policy of targeting U.N. and other providers of aid to sabotage efforts to assist Palestinians.
"We call on the United Nations to take a clear and strong stance regarding this crime, and to act immediately" to hold Israel accountable, the office said.
Israel Defense Forces denied mounting any attack on a U.N. site in the vicinity and cautioned media outlets to be wary of "unverified" allegations.
Following the overnight attacks, the military issued fresh evacuation orders to Gazans to move from designated areas in Beit Hanoun, Khirbet Khuza'a, Abasan al-Kabira and al-Jadidah.
"For your own safety, you must evacuate immediately to the known shelters in western Gaza City and those in Khan Younis. Remaining in the designated areas puts your life and the lives of your family members at risk," IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote in a post on X early Wednesday.
The latest casualties come after the heaviest bombardment of Gaza in the 17-month-long conflict early Tuesday killed hundreds, with the Gaza Health Ministry saying the death toll as of noon Wednesday had risen to at least 436, including 183 children, with 678 people injured.
The U.N.'s top humanitarian affairs official said the level of violence was unprecedented.
"Intensity of the killings is now off the scale," said Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed anger at the killings, calling the suffering of Gazans caused by the resumption of deadly Israeli airstrikes "intolerable" and urged an immediate return to the cease-fire between Isreal and Hamas that came into force on Jan. 19.
"I strongly appeal for the cease-fire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian assistance to be re-established and for the remaining hostages to be released unconditionally," he wrote in a post on his official account on X.
Israel effectively ended its cease-fire and hostage release/prisoner exchange deal with Hamas after Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced in the early hours of Tuesday that they had instructed the IDF to act against Hamas in Gaza due the militant group's refusal to release the remaining hostages it is holding.
Israel had been trying to extend an initial phase of the cease-fire to get more hostages released while Hamas wanted to progress to a second planned phase that, in addition to the release of the rest of the hostages, would see a permanent end to the fighting and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
However, disagreements saw internationally mediated negotiations falter in recent weeks prompting Israel to tighten the screws on Gaza once again, cutting off all aid from entering the strip at the beginning of the month followed by the electricity supply on March 9, critical for Gaza's hospitals and water desalination operations.