As Israeli negotiators prepared to meet with international mediators to discuss a ceasefire, an Israeli airstrike struck a school used by displaced people in the center of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing dozens.
At least 30 people who had taken refuge in a girls’ school in Deir ez-Zor Barah were taken to Al-Aqsa Hospital where they were confirmed dead, according to the Israeli military, after the attack targeted a Hamas command and control centre used to store weapons and plan attacks.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 11 people were killed in other attacks on Saturday.
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Destruction of buildings in the Gaza Strip was photographed from southern Israel on July 24, 2024. (Tsafrir Abayov)
Near the hospital, 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 lifeless 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.
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. The army said it was planning operations against Hamas fighters in the city, including parts of Mwassi, a crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has ordered thousands of Palestinians to evacuate throughout the war.
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Amal Abdel Hadi, left, and Nour Abdel Hadi, right, look on as their 2-year-old niece, Siwar, is injured in an Israeli airstrike on July 24, 2024. (Abdel Kareem Hana)
The planned attack came a day before U.S., Egyptian, Qatari and Israeli officials were scheduled to meet in Italy to discuss the hostage crisis 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 planning.
It’s the second evacuation order in a week and also covers parts of the humanitarian area. The 60 square kilometres (about 20 square miles) area is covered by tent camps with no sanitation or medical facilities and limited access to aid, according to the UN and humanitarian groups. Israel expanded the area in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, then home to more than half Gaza’s population.
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Palestinian refugees live in a makeshift tent camp in the Mwassi neighborhood in southern Gaza on January 1, 2024. (Fatima Shubeir, files)
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 evacuate.”
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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 ez-Zor Barah confirmed the death toll, and Associated Press journalists examined the bodies.
More than 39,100 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry, a figure that does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The United Nations estimated in February that some 17,000 children are currently unaccompanied in the Gaza Strip, and that number may be rising.
The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants raided southern Israel, leaving 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians, and about 250 taken hostage. Israeli officials say about 115 people remain in Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to have been killed.
