ISRAELI strikes on the Gaza Strip overnight and into this morning killed at least 25 people, including eight children and five women, according to Palestinian medics.

A strike on a home in the central town of Deir al-Balah killed 11 people, including five children as young as two, according to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.

Another four people were killed in a separate strike that hit a different house in the town, it said.

In the northern town of Beit Lahiya, a strike hit a home and killed a family of seven, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

A separate air strike targeted a group of people in an open area north-west of Gaza City, killing four people, including one who was due to be married next week.

The ministry said that the bodies of 58 people killed by Israeli strikes were brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours, along with 213 wounded.

The overall Palestinian death toll has now risen to at least 50,810, with 115,688 others wounded, it said.

The dead include 1,499 killed since Israel resumed its brutal campaign last month, breaking a ceasefire that came into place in January.

Since then, Israel has cut off all food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza — a tactic that rights groups say amounts to a war crime — and issued displacement orders that have forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee ongoing bombardments and ground offensives.

Among the latest casualties was a Palestinian photojournalist, Ahmed Mansour, who died from severe burns sustained in an Israeli air strike on a media tent outside a hospital in Khan Younis on Monday.

The strike killed two other people, including another journalist, and wounded five other reporters.

Mr Mansour’s death brings the number of journalists killed in the war to 211.

Violence against Palestinians continues elsewhere in the region.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian woman they said had thrown rocks and attempted to stab them.

No Israeli soldiers were injured in the incident, which occurred at a traffic junction near an Israeli settlement.

The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the woman as Amana Yacoub, 30, from the nearby town of Salfit.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli Ministry of Education employees accompanied by police officers forcibly entered six schools affiliated with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and announced plans to shut them down.

UNRWA information office director Abir Ismail denounced the raids in the neighbourhoods of Shuafat, Silwan, Sur Baher and Wadi al-Joz as a violation of international law.

“This procedure represents a violation of the right of Palestine refugee children to receive education, and threatens to deprive hundreds of children of their basic right to education within their country,” he said.

“If we are forced to close, the consequences will be dire, as the children will be deprived of their basic right to education, which will exacerbate their suffering and negatively affect their future.”

Israel banned UNRWA from operating on Israeli-controlled land earlier this year, including in East Jerusalem.

The UN has said it will continue to provide services across the Palestinian territories.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Supreme Court is hearing eight cases challenging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to dismiss the head of the internal security agency.

The hearing has become the latest in an ongoing battle between Mr Netanyahu and the judiciary, and any ruling could deepen the country’s political divisions over the role of the courts in checking executive power.