JERUSALEM: An Israeli soldier the military feared had been abducted by Palestinian gunmen in a firefight that shattered a temporary cease-fire in Gaza has been declared dead.

The military announced early Sunday that 23-year-old Hadar Goldin of the Givati infantry brigade had been killed in battle on Friday.

Israeli revenge attacks on civilians in its aftermath had left scores dead and injured in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the extent of destruction around Rafah became clear after intense Israeli shelling in response to Goldin’s suspected capture killed over 100 and wounded some 450. Entire apartment buildings in Rafah were flattened. Rescue teams sprayed water on charred rubble as families searched the wreckage for any salvageable belongings. Nearly two dozen bodies wrapped in bloodstained white cloth lay piled on the ground and the shelves of a cold storage room in a flower farm.

The farm’s owner, Ghazi Hijazi, said the Health Ministry asked him to keep the bodies. Imad Baroud, his wife and three kids fled by foot from their home near the Gaza-Egypt border to his parents’ home in the center of Rafah to escape the shelling. He said his home was hit by artillery shells immediately after they left.

“The situation could not be described in words. The kids were yelling, they were scared, my wife was scared. I felt death was close,” Baroud said.

Palestinian officials reported more than 150 Israeli airstrikes Saturday across Gaza, including several against mosques and one against the Hamas-linked Islamic University in Gaza City. Heavy shelling also continued along the border areas.

The Israeli military said it struck 200 targets over the previous 24 hours. It said it attacked five mosques that concealed weapons and that the Islamic University was being used as a research and weapons manufacturing site for Hamas. The claim could not be independently verified.

The Israeli military had previously said it believed the soldier was grabbed in a Hamas ambush Friday morning. Hamas on Saturday distanced itself from the soldier’s alleged capture, which had prompted widespread international condemnation. US President Barack Obama, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and others had called for his immediate and unconditional release.