DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (Dispatches) — Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 92 people, including women, children and a local journalist, officials said Wednesday, as the Zionist regime prepared to ramp up its genocide in the strip, with the devastating war now entering its 20th month.
Two Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday in central Gaza killed at least 33 people and wounded 86, including several children, though the actual death toll is likely higher, according to health officials.
The new massacre comes days after Israel approved a plan to intensify its onslaught on the Palestinian enclave, which would include seizing Gaza, holding on to occupied territories, forcibly displacing Palestinians to southern Gaza and taking control of aid distribution along with private security companies.
Israel is also calling up tens of thousands of reserve soldiers to carry out the invasion. The occupying regime says the plan will be gradual and will not be implemented until after U.S. President Donald Trump wraps up his visit to the region later this month.
Any escalation of onslaught would likely drive up the death toll. And with Israel already controlling some 50% of Gaza, increasing its hold on the territory, for an indefinite amount of time, could open up the potential for a military occupation, which would raise questions about how Israel plans to have the territory governed, especially at a time when it is considering how to implement Trump’s vision to take over Gaza.
The Israeli invasion has so far killed more than 52,500 people in Gaza, many of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.
Wednesday’s strikes included two attacks on a crowded market area in Gaza City, health officials said.
Footage posted online reportedly
 showed the aftermath with men found dead, including one still seated in a chair inside a Thai restaurant, used by locals as a gathering spot, and several children lying motionless on the ground, covered in blood.
Journalist Yahya Sobeih, who freelanced for several local outlets, was among those killed, according to Gaza’s media office. He had shared a photo on Instagram of his newborn baby girl.
Victims of the blasts, some with severe injuries, were taken to nearby Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza health ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said.
An attack Tuesday night on a school sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians killed 27 people, officials from the Al-Aqsa Hospital said, including nine women and three children. The school has been struck repeatedly since the war began. Earlier, a strike on another school turned shelter in Gaza City killed 16 people, according to officials at Al-Ahli Hospital, while strikes in other areas killed at least 16 others.
In Bureij, an urban refugee camp, paramedics and rescuers rushed to pull people out of a blaze after a large column of smoke and fires pierced the dark skies above the school shelter.
Since Israel ended a ceasefire with Hamas in mid-March, it has unleashed fierce strikes on Gaza that have killed hundreds and captured swaths of territory. Before the truce ended, Israel halted all humanitarian aid into the territory, including food, fuel and water, setting off what is believed to be the worst humanitarian crisis in 19 months of war.