GAZA/JERUSALEM - At least 34 Palestinians were killed and dozens of others wounded in airstrikes carried out by the Israeli army across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Gaza's civil defense said.

Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the civil defense, told Xinhua that the Israeli army targeted several residential homes, gatherings, and tents housing displaced persons in various areas of the coastal enclave.

At least 13 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on two houses in the west and south of Gaza City, Basal said.

Three other people were killed in two Israeli drone attacks in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, while two were killed in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a house in the town of Al-Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip.

READ MORE: ICC judges ordered to review Israel's challenge of jurisdiction

Nine people were killed, including four in an Israeli airstrike on a cafe in the city of Deir al-Balah and five in an attack on a Palestinian gathering north of the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, according to Basal.

Seven others were killed in Israeli shelling targeting a gathering in the town of Al-Zawaida in the central Gaza Strip and another in the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis in the south, said Basal.

Meanwhile, two Israeli soldiers were killed on Friday in the northern Gaza Strip, according to separate statements issued by the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police on Saturday evening.

The two are Ido Voloch, 21, an armored corps officer and platoon commander, and Neta Yitzhak Kahana, 19, an undercover officer in the Border Police.

Israel's state-owned Kan TV News reported that a Border Police ambush force encountered a squad of militants in the Shajaiyah neighborhood, eastern Gaza City, and Kahana was killed in the ensuing battle.

READ MORE: 29 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, says civil defense spokesman

According to the report, about 15 minutes later, during the rescue operations, militants fired an RPG rocket at the rescue force, resulting in an Israeli soldier being moderately wounded.

About an hour later, militants fired an RPG at an Israeli tank in Shajaiyah, during which Voloch was killed and another soldier was moderately wounded.

The channel added that in the Tel al-Sultan refugee camp in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, four Israeli armored fighters were injured, one seriously and three moderately, by explosive devices.  

Since Israel resumed its intensified military campaign on March 18, at least 2,111 Palestinians have been killed and 5,483 injured, bringing the overall death toll in Gaza since the war began in October 2023 to 51,495, with a total of 117,524 people injured, according to health authorities in Gaza on Saturday.

ALSO READ: WFP runs out of food stocks in Gaza with border crossings closed

As the Israeli army continues its military operations, clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants break out in various areas of the Strip.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said in a statement that "our members attacked Israeli soldiers entrenched inside a house in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza on Saturday".

The attack led to multiple Israeli soldiers' casualties, the brigades added.