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Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war, which Israel strongly denies, BBC News reports.

The UK-based human rights group said its conclusion was based on “dehumanising and genocidal statements” by Israeli officials, digital images and witness testimony and must serve as “a wake-up call” to the international community.

Israel’s foreign ministry described the 295-page report as “entirely false and based on lies”, while the Israeli military said the claims were “entirely baseless and fail to account for the operational realities” it faces.

In the past day, meanwhile, local medics say at least 50 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza.

The biggest number of people were killed in the al-Mawasi tent camp for displaced people, where Israel says it was targeting Hamas operatives.

Amnesty says that its research over months “has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed - and is continuing to commit - genocide against Palestinians”.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted following the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, said Israeli actions “include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction".