Gaza City (Alliance News) - The death toll in Israel's intense bombardments of the Gaza Strip has reached 77, reports the Alray news agency of Hamas, the Islamist movement movement in control of the coastal enclave.

More than 550 have been injured, it says. Many of the dead and injured are civilians, among them women and children, the report says.

In addition to known militants, eight members of the same family were killed in a strike on the house of a suspected militant in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis and at least seven civilian men died watching World Cup football when a bomb struck a beach cafe also in Khan Younis, it says.

An Israeli military spokesman is not immediately able to specify what the intended militant target had been and says Israel is checking the incidents of civilian deaths.

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