Israel has carried out fresh air strikes on Gaza after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered retaliation for one of the heaviest barrages of rocket-fire by Hamas in months.

The Israeli military said about half of the 10 rockets which were fired from Gaza late on Sunday landed inside Israel, while the remainder were shot down. One person was wounded by falling debris, Israeli medics said.

Netanyahu issued the instruction for a “strong response” while on his way to Washington, where he is due to hold talks with US President Donald Trump.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said on Monday morning that at least 56 Palestinians had killed there by Israel over the previous 24 hours.

A Palestinian journalist was killed and nine others wounded when an air strike hit a tent used by local media in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, the Hamas Government Media Office and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) said.

Reuters news agency said footage showed people trying to put out a blaze in the tent which it said was inside the compound of Nasser hospital.

The dead journalist was identified by the PJS as Helmi al-Faqaawi of Palestine Today TV.

In a joint statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Shin Bet intelligence agency said they had struck a “Hamas terrorist… who operates under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company”.

They said the man, Hassan Eslaih, had participated in the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel which triggered the war.

The PJS said it “strongly condemned, in the harshest terms, this appalling massacre”. It called on the UN to take action to stop Israel from “targeting the entire Palestinian people, including journalists”.

Nasser, which is the largest hospital still functioning in Gaza, has been struck multiple times by the IDF since the war began.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals as covert bases and for storing weapons, which the group denies.

Earlier, the IDF said it had hit the launcher which fired the rockets at Israel, after ordering residents in several districts of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza to evacuate.

Issuing the order, IDF Arabic spokesman Lt Col Avichay Adraee warned that Israel would “launch a severe strike on any area from which rockets are fired”.

Hamas said it fired the rockets in response to Israeli “massacres of civilians in Gaza”, Reuters news agency reported.

Footage from the Israeli city of Ashkelon showed flashes in the sky as sirens wailed and an explosion at the bottom of a block of flats during the rocket attack on Sunday night.

The rate and scale of Hamas’s rocket attacks sharply dropped after the first few months of the war, as Israel intensively targeted its arsenals and launchers. But the group still intermittently fires at Israel, in a sign that it still possesses capabilities.

Israeli air strikes continued overnight following the attack on the rocket launchers, with the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reporting that sites in north, central and south Gaza were hit.

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron held talks in Cairo on Monday with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II as part of efforts to try to restore a ceasefire.

At a joint news conference, Macron said both he and Sisi “condemn the resumption of Israeli strikes on Gaza”. He also said Hamas must not be part of any future government in Gaza, and that the internationally backed Palestinian Authority – Hamas’s political rival – should take charge.

Netanyahu said the Gaza war and Israel’s efforts to secure the release of the 59 hostages still being held by Hamas would be on the agenda of his talks with President Trump at the White House on Monday.

Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza last month, blaming Hamas for rejecting a US proposal to extend a ceasefire which had begun in January. Hamas, in turn, accused Israel of abandoning the original deal which both sides had agreed to.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 50,750 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive since then, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.