Fourteen people were killed in a strike that hit the Al-Fara family home, and a separate raid killed another six, said agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

Bassal said the 14 included nine children under the age of 16.

"The rocket fell next to us, and we were buried under the rubble. My children and sister were killed," Umm al-Ameer al-Fara who survived the strike told AFP.

Next to her, Ihsan al-Fara said there were only "women and children" and no militants in the house.

"My son Issa was killed, he was five years old... All my children were injured," she added.

Relatives combed through their home destroyed following the strike, while others overlooked a large crater filled with household debris, including mattresses and shattered furniture.

AFP photographs showed relatives at the European hospital in Khan Yunis mourning the deaths of children, the bodies of several of them wrapped in white shrouds.

The Israeli military, in a statement giving an operational update, said that "a number of terrorists were eliminated from the air and ground" in southern Gaza.

While Israeli forces continue to operate across Gaza, recent weeks have seen an intensified air and ground assault in the territory's north, where the military reports Hamas militants are regrouping.

The Gaza war began with Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed 42,847 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, data which the United Nations considers reliable.

Vast swathes of Gaza have been reduced to rubble amid Israel's massive air and ground campaign against militants based in the besieged Palestinian territory, displacing almost all of its civilian population of 2.4 million people at least once in the past year.