An Israeli airstrike hits a school sheltering people in Gaza, killing at least 30
DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes hit a school being used by displaced people in central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people, including several children, as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators to discuss 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 that 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. Walls were shattered 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 had been killed in other strikes Saturday.
Officials from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy on Sunday for cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director William Burns is expected to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman 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 because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
U.S. officials said Friday that Israel and Hamas are in agreement on the basic framework of the three-phase deal under consideration. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed in a Wednesday speech to the U.S. Congress to press forward with the war until Israel achieves “total victory.”
In the U.S., Benjamin Netanyahu courted Donald Trump but heard a new harsher tone on the Gaza war from Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee.
After the school strike, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement that Netanyahu’s reception from his supporters in the United States constituted a “green light” to continue Israel’s offensive.
“Every time the occupation bombs a school that shelters displaced persons, we see only some condemnations and denunciations that will not force the occupation to stop its bloody aggression,” he said.
A new exchange of attacks and accusations between Israel’s military and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon renewed concerns about the war in Gaza inspiring a wider conflict.
Israel says at least 11 people have been killed by a rocket strike in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. It blames Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which issues denial.
New evacuation order for part of humanitarian zone
Israel’s military on Saturday ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Yunis. The 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. It’s the second evacuation order issued in a week. The roughly 20-square-mile zone is blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid. 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.
The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of part of a crowded area in Gaza it has designated a humanitarian zone.
“This is my ninth or eighth displacement,” said Mohammad Jaber, who was originally displaced from Rafah. “Every time they tell us to go to an area, and it is unsafe. This time, we do not know where to go.” He wiped the sweat from his face as children piled neat bundles of belongings on the sand, ready for transport by vehicle or donkey cart.
Gaza Health Ministry officials said the evacuation orders had forced at least three health centers to stop providing care and compounded existing issues such as displaced people crammed in places where waste has piled up and hygiene kits are unavailable.
Israeli estimates about 1.8 million Palestinians are sheltering in the zone after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground attacks. In November, the military said that 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 there were constantly being displaced.
Israel has assassinated two dozen Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon since last fall amid an intelligence war employing cellphones, drones and fake rocks.
“These are forced displacement orders,” said Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications. “What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”
In central Gaza, Palestinians mourned seven people killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida. 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 rites. Al Aqsa Hospital confirmed the count and AP journalists saw the bodies.
Israel’s attack in Yemen — after Houthi rebels hit Tel Aviv — gives militant group the legitimacy it craved, experts say, as fears of regional war rise.
Two deaths in the West Bank
In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 17-year-old and 24-year-old were killed and 22 other people wounded in an Israeli drone strike in Balata camp in Nablus.
The Israeli military said an aircraft attacked as part of its activity in Nablus. It said “terrorists” had fired at a military position and a soldier was lightly wounded.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,200 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.
Two-year-old Siwar Abdel-Hadi is the lone survivor in her family after an Israeli airstrike on her home. The Israel-Hamas war has left thousands of orphans in Gaza.
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. Some 115 hostages are still in Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
On Saturday night, Israelis again held an anti-government demonstration in Tel Aviv demanding a cease-fire deal and the return of remaining hostages. “There’s a deal on the table and we need to make it happen, and we need to make it happen now,” said one protester, Tamir Guytsabary.
Associated Press writers Shurafa and Metz reported from Deir al Balah and Rabat, Morocco, respectively.
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