Gaza’s morgues were full and hospitals struggled to cope with the influx of casualties on Tuesday as Israel carpet-bombed and destroyed entire neighborhoods and appeared set to launch a lengthy ground invasion of the territory.

The UN humanitarian group OCHA said late Tuesday that more than 400 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed in the past 24 hours – “compared with the over 200 in the previous two days, since the start of hostilities.”

Gaza’s health ministry said late Tuesday that there were 900 fatalities and 4,600 injuries in the territory since Israel began its reprisal strikes on Saturday. Among those killed were 260 children and 230 women, suggesting that the overwhelming number of Palestinians killed in Gaza were civilians.

Varying unofficial figures given by Israeli media put the death toll in that country from Saturday’s raids by guerrilla fighters and ongoing rocket fire at 900 to 1,200 on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military conducted tours for foreign correspondents of Gaza-area settlements where it said civilians were massacred, but has denied Israeli journalists access to those areas.

An Israeli military spokesperson claimed on Tuesday that the army had found the bodies of 1,500 Palestinian guerrillas in the country.

The Israeli government, including its military, has a long track record of lying and in general, its claims should be met with skepticism until there is verified information.

Volker Türk, the United Nations human rights chief, said on Tuesday that he was “deeply shocked and appalled by allegations of summary executions of civilians and, in some instances, horrifying mass killings by members of Palestinian armed groups.”

Human Rights Watch accused Hamas fighters of massacring Israeli civilians, including at the Supernova all-night rave where the BBC, citing the Israeli rescue agency Zaka, said 260 people were killed.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said on Tuesday that a “criminal policy of revenge is underway” in Gaza.

“The Gaza Strip is closed off on all sides and the residents have no way out. There are no shelters and no way to seek cover from airstrikes,” the rights group said.

B’Tselem added that Israel’s targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure was “not new, but has been implemented towards Gaza for many years” and has only wrought “more horror.”

On Monday, the armed wing of Hamas threatened to execute captives held in Gaza since Saturday if Israel continued to kill Palestinian families in their home without warning, but there was no claim or evidence that they had carried out that threat as of Tuesday night.

Young man looks up while holding a large roller suitcase as another person carries a suitcase in front of several bombed-out multi-story buildings

Israeli aerial and ground bombardments on Tuesday focused on the Rimal neighborhood west of Gaza City and southern Khan Younis. Palestinian armed groups continued to fire rockets and mortars from.

Gaza on Tuesday, with reports that a Palestinian youth in a West Bank town near Tulkarm was killed by one of those projectiles or shrapnel from an Iron Dome interception.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had secured the Gaza boundary that was crossed at several points by guerrillas on Saturday but it was still searching for fighters in the area.

Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, urged a ceasefire and said that Cairo, which has mediated such agreements between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza in the past, was “communicating with all international and regional parties in order to reach an immediate cessation of violence and achieve de-escalation.”

As Israel and guerrilla groups in Lebanon exchanged fire over the border for the third consecutive day, and senior Iraqi and Yemeni leaders aligned with Iran threatened the US over its intervention in support of Israel, al-Sisi warned that the current situation threatened “security and stability” in the wider region.

An Egyptian official said that Israel has rebuffed Cairo’s efforts to mediate a de-escalation, “indicating that it wants to deal a knock-out blow to Hamas before entertaining the idea of a ceasefire,” The Times of Israel reported.

The Egyptian official said that Israel was “readying for a months-long ground campaign in Gaza,” the publication added.

(Collected)