GAZA: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has said the US continues to urge Israel to avoid the loss of innocent lives in Gaza as it carries out missions like the one that saw four Israeli captives released, but resulted in the deaths of more than 270 Palestinians, Al Jazeera reports.

“Now we have said all along that Israel should be operating in a way, not just consistent with the laws of war, but taking extra precautions to try to protect civilians,” Sullivan told ABC News in an interview from Paris, where he accompanied President Joe Biden for D-Day 80th anniversary observances.

“We have spoken about where we would like to see them operate differently, where we would like them to be more precise, more targeted in their operations,” he said.

Fighting saw four members of one family killed when an air strike hit their house in Gaza City’s Al-Daraj area, in the territory’s north, AFP quotes Al-Ahli hospital medics as stating.

Israeli helicopters were also firing east of the Bureij camp, near Nuseirat, witnesses told AFP. And heavy artillery shelling hit central and northern areas of Rafah, said officials in the southern city.

“We will continue to act with determination and strength, in accordance with our right to self-defence, until all of the hostages are freed and Hamas is defeated,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz said.

Seeking to explain the civilian toll and damage from the Nuseirat raid, Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner told US network ABC that forces “came under fire from a 360-degree threat… It was and is a war zone”.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell welcomed the hostage release and said reports “of another massacre of civilians are appalling… the bloodbath must end immediately”.