At least 50 people, a third of them children, have been killed in an Israeli strike in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya city, authorities said, as deadly bombardments hit the central and southern parts of the besieged Palestinian territory.

Gaza’s Government Media Office on Sunday said Israeli forces struck a multistorey residential building housing six forcibly displaced Palestinian families in Beit Lahiya.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that emergency workers were unable to reach the site of the attack due to the more than 40-day-old Israeli siege of northern Gaza.

With reports of several people trapped under the rubble, the death toll is likely to rise in the coming hours.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has been conducting genocide in the Palestinian territory for more than a year.