DEIR EZ-OR-BARAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike struck a school used by displaced people in central Gaza on Saturday, killing dozens of people, as Israeli negotiators prepared to meet with international mediators to discuss a ceasefire.
According to the Israeli military, at least 30 people who had taken refuge in a girls’ school in Deir ez-Zor al-Balah were taken to Al-Aqsa Hospital where they were pronounced dead after the attack targeted a Hamas command and control centre used to store weapons and plan attacks. The militants “used the facility as a hideout to orchestrate and plan numerous attacks against the IDF” and “developed and stored large amounts of weapons inside,” it said.
Civil defence officials in the Gaza Strip said thousands of people were taking shelter in schools that also housed medical facilities.
Near the hospital where the bodies were taken, an Associated Press reporter saw an ambulance speeding down a dusty road as several people ran in the opposite direction. A wounded man lay on the ground on a stretcher. Inside the ambulance lay a body covered in a blanket and the body of a young child.
Inside the school, classrooms had collapsed and people were seen searching for victims under the rubble and collecting the bodies of the victims.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 12 people were killed in other attacks on Saturday.
The attack came a day before U.S., Egyptian, Qatari and Israeli officials were scheduled to meet in Italy to discuss hostage and ceasefire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is scheduled to meet Sunday with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad Director David Barnea and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, according to U.S. and Egyptian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
U.S. officials said Friday that Israel and Hamas had agreed on the basic framework for a proposed three-phase agreement, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech to the U.S. Congress, vowed to continue the war until Israel achieved “total victory.”
Palestinian officials slammed the speech after the school strikes, and Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement that Netanyahu’s welcome from US supporters was a “green light” for the Israeli offensive to continue.
“Every time the occupying forces bomb a school providing shelter for displaced people, condemnations and accusations fly, but this does not force the occupying forces to end their bloody act of aggression,” he said.
Humanitarian area evacuated before attack
Earlier, the Israeli military ordered the withdrawal from parts of designated humanitarian areas in the Gaza Strip ahead of a planned attack on Khan Yunis on Saturday.
The evacuation order was in response to rocket attacks that Israel said were fired from the area. Operations against Hamas The fighters gathered in towns across the city, including parts of Mwasi, a crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has sought refuge for thousands of Palestinians throughout the war.
it is Second evacuation order issued in a week This includes attacks on part of a humanitarian aid area, covering an area of 60 square kilometers (about 20 square miles). Covered by tent camps The Gaza Strip lacks health and medical facilities and has limited access to aid, according to the United Nations and humanitarian groups. Israel expanded the area in May to accommodate people fleeing Rafah, then home to more than half the Gaza Strip’s population.
Gaza Health Ministry officials said the evacuation order had forced at least three medical centers to stop providing care and exacerbated existing problems, forcing displaced people into areas piled with garbage and with no access to hygiene kits.
Israel estimates that around 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering in the Gaza Strip after being forced to flee multiple times for safety by intense Israeli air and ground bombardment. In November, the army said the strip was still subject to attack and that while it was “not a safe zone, it is safer than anywhere else in the Gaza Strip.”
The UN agency providing assistance to Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said it was becoming increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by evacuation orders, as those under them were constantly being forced to flee.
“To call this an evacuation order does not do it justice,” said Juliet Tuma, the department’s public affairs director. “This is a mandatory evacuation order. People who are subject to this order have very little time to move.”
Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven people in an overnight Israeli airstrike in Zawayda, central Gaza. Two families, parents and two children, and a mother and two children, were wrapped in traditional Islamic white burial shrouds and local residents gathered for a funeral. As men filed out to pray before the bodies, friends and neighbors approached one by one to pay their final, tearful respects.
Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Ba’a confirmed the death toll, and Associated Press journalists viewed the bodies.
More than 39,200 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to Gaza Strip figures. Ministry of Public HealthThe UN does not separate its counts of combatants from civilians. Children in the territory are currently unaccompanied.and the number appears to have continued to grow since then.
War Attack by Hamas fighters The Oct. 7 terrorist attack in southern Israel killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Israeli officials say about 115 people remain in the Gaza Strip, about a third of whom are believed to have been killed.
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Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco.
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