Gaza City, December 16 (RHC)-- The Israeli military has killed dozens of Palestinians, mostly in the northern Gaza Strip, in airstrikes on homes and schools sheltering displaced people.

Gaza's civil defense agency said Sunday that rescuers working through the night recovered the bodies of 18 people.  Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said dozens more were injured in the "ongoing aggression and Israeli aerial and artillery bombardment" across Gaza.  

The dead included at least three children, Bassal said.  Four people, he said, were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a house in central Gaza City.

Another four were killed, and eight injured, when an Israeli missile hit a tent sheltering dozens of displaced people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

Residents said several houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the northern towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp.  In Beit Hanoun, the regime’s forces besieged families sheltering in a school and stormed the building and kidnapped several men, according to medics and residents.

At least 15 people were also killed and wounded during the raid on the school, they said.  Among the victims were a couple and their two daughters, medics said.  

A health facility has completely been destroyed by Israeli forces in Jabalia, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.  The facility -- Abu Shbak Health Center -- provided essential first aid services and mental healthcare.

In the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has again ordered displaced people to “evacuate” two residential areas, including locations previously designated as a safe zone, and “move immediately westward to the humanitarian zone.”

The Israeli military has on several occasions forced Palestinians to move toward locations it claims are "humanitarian.”

Recent research by Action For Humanity (AFH) found that more than a quarter of the 200,000 people in the “humanitarian zones” in central Gaza have had to move 10 or more times in the past 14 months.

The research, based on testimonials from Palestinians forcibly transferred to the designated “humanitarian zone” in the middle/south of Gaza, has made it clear that there are no real humanitarian zones in Gaza.

It also said that the “evacuation orders” Israel issues are not aimed at getting Palestinians out of harm’s way. 

The use of terms like “evacuation orders” by the Israeli regime and the Western media serves only to whitewash what is currently happening before the eyes of the world in Gaza, which is “land grabs under the threat of extermination,” the research found.