DEIR AL-BALAH: Israeli airstrikes hit a school used by displaced Palestinians in central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people including several children, as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators about a proposed cease-fire.
Seven children and seven women were among the dead taken from the girls' school in Deir al-Balah to Al Aqsa Hospital. Israel's military said it targeted a Hamas command center used to direct attacks against Israeli troops and store "large quantities of weapons.” Hamas called the military’s claim false.
Civil defense workers in Gaza said thousands had been sheltering in the school, which also contained a medical site. Associated Press journalists saw a dead toddler in an ambulance and bodies covered with blankets. Shattered walls gaped and classrooms were in ruins. People searched the rubble strewn with pillows and other signs of habitation.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 12 people were killed in other strikes on Saturday.
Officials from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy on Sunday to discuss cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
U.S. officials on Friday said Israel and Hamas agree on the basic framework of the three-phase deal. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech to the U.S. Congress vowed to press ahead with the war until “total victory.”
After the Israeli strike on the school, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said Netanyahu's reception from supporters in the U.S. constituted a “green light” to continue Israel's offensive.
A deadly new exchange of fire between Israel's military and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon renewed concerns about the war in Gaza inspiring a wider regional conflict.
Earlier, Israel's military ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis on Saturday.
The evacuation order was in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated from the area. The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.
The planned strike comes a day before officials from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy to discuss the ongoing hostage and cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel on Sunday, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
It’s the second evacuation order issued in a week that has included striking part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time had crowded.
According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering under there were constantly being displaced.
“Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don’t do any justice to what this means,” said Juliette Touma, the agency's director of communications. “These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”
Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza. Members of two families --parents and their two children as well as a mother and her two children -- were wrapped in traditional Islamic white burial shrouds as community members gathered to perform funeral rights. As men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, weeping friends and neighbours approached individually to pay their final respects.
Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital confirmed the count and Associated Press journalists saw the bodies.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The U.N. estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.
The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
