Israeli army Merkava main battle tanks move at a position in southern Israel along the border fence with the northern Gaza Strip on March 18, 2025. Menahem Kahana, AFP/File

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories -- Gaza's civil defense agency said an Israeli strike on a residential building in Gaza City killed at least 23 people Wednesday, most of them children or women, as the military said it targeted a "senior Hamas" militant.

The strike took place in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, the agency's spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

"The death toll from the Shujaiya massacre has risen to 23 martyrs, including eight children and eight women," he said, adding that more than 60 people were wounded.

"There are still people trapped under the rubble."

Ayub Salim, a 26-year-old Shujaiya resident, told AFP he witnessed the strike on the four-storey block.

He said the area was hit with "multiple missiles" and was "overcrowded with tents, displaced people and homes".

"Shrapnel flew in all directions," he said, speaking of "a terrifying and indescribable scene".

"Dust and massive destruction filled the entire place, we couldn't see anything, just the screams and panic of the people".

Salim said the dead were "torn to pieces".

"Even now, emergency crews are still transporting the dead and the injured. It is truly a horrific massacre," he said.

A crew from the Gaza civil defense agency rushed to the scene, only to find several people trapped under the rubble, a rescuer said.

"This house was home to many people who believed they were safe. It was blown up over their heads," Ibrahim Abu al-Rish told AFP.

He added that the strike hit while many children were playing inside.

"The house was directly bombed, and the entire residential area was destroyed," he said.

"We pulled out the remains of women and children. There are still people buried under the rubble."

READ: UN says nearly 400,000 displaced since end of Gaza ceasefire

READ: Red Crescent says Israeli troops shot medics, rescuers 'with intent to kill'

- 'Bloody massacre' -

When asked by AFP about the strike the military said it "struck a senior Hamas terrorist who was responsible for planning and executing terrorist attacks" from the area.

It did not give the target's name and renewed its claim, denied by Hamas, that the militant group uses "human shields".

Hamas condemned the strike as one of the "most heinous acts of genocide."

"The terrorist Zionist occupation army has committed a bloody massacre by bombing a densely populated residential area filled with civilians and displaced people," the group said in a statement.

"These ongoing massacres against our defenseless people -- with full support from the American administration, which is complicit in the aggression -- represent a stain on the conscience of the international community."

Israel resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said on Wednesday that at least 1,482 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,846.

Hamas's October 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas's political bureau, told AFP on Tuesday that it was "necessary to reach a ceasefire" in Gaza.

He added that "communication with the mediators is still ongoing" but that "so far, there are no new proposals".

Badran said Hamas "is open to all ideas that would lead to a ceasefire and stop the genocide enacted against our Palestinian people".

US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that new negotiations were in the works aimed at getting more hostages released from captivity in Gaza.

Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas's attack on Israel, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

© Agence France-Presse