Palestinian health authorities have said 408 people had been killed in one of the biggest single-day tolls since Israel’s military campaign, Reuters reports.

The health ministry said many of the dead were children, and 562 people were wounded.

In hospitals strained by 15 months of bombardment, piles of bodies in white plastic sheets smeared with blood were stacked up as casualties were brought in. Israeli tanks shelled from across the border, witnesses said.

Among the Hamas officials killed in the airstrikes were Essam Addalees, the de facto head of the Hamas government, Ahmed Al-Hetta, deputy justice minister, and Mahmoud Abu Watfa, the head of the security services, Hamas said.

“It was a night of hell. It felt like the first days of the war,” saidRabiha Jamal, aged 65, a mother of five from Gaza City.