GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories, April 9, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on a residential building in the Shujaiya area of Gaza City killed at least 20 people Wednesday, as the military said it targeted a "senior Hamas" militant.

The agency's spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP the strike resulted in "20 martyrs and more than 40 injured" and the search for bodies in the rubble was ongoing.

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

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, describing "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.

"Civil defence teams are struggling to retrieve them all."

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".

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.