The Israeli army carried out new deadly strikes in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, one of which killed 16 people in a school sheltering displaced people according to Hamas, and killed a Hezbollah member in a drone attack in neighboring Lebanon.
Israel said its air force had targeted “several terrorists” “in the area of the al-Jaouni school” in Nousseirat (center), managed by the UN and sheltering displaced people. “This place served as a hiding place and operational infrastructure from which attacks were carried out against soldiers,” the army said.
As the war in Gaza enters its 10th day on Sunday,e Last month, the Hamas government that rules the Palestinian territory announced that 16 people had been killed in an Israeli strike on the school.
At the same time, diplomatic efforts have been relaunched towards a ceasefire and the release of hostages held in Gaza, with Israel announcing that it would send a delegation next week to continue talks with Qatari mediators.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 116 are still being held in Gaza, 42 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli army.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which it lists as a terrorist organization along with the United States and the European Union. Its military offensive in the Palestinian territory has killed 38,098 people, mostly civilians, according to data Saturday from the Hamas government’s health ministry.
In the small strip of devastated land, where Israel is besieging some 2.4 million people in conditions the UN has called “dire”, water and food are in short supply. According to the UN, 80% of the population is displaced and several residents, including children, have died of malnutrition.
“Massacre”
PHOTO RAMADAN ABED, REUTERS
A woman reacts after the Israeli army bombed a school.
The Hamas government denounced the strike on the al-Jaouni school as a “heinous massacre,” and said 50 wounded people had been taken to hospital. It said there were 7,000 displaced people in the school.
“Shrapnel hit me when I was in a classroom, the children were injured,” Samah Abou Amsha told AFP at the school. “Where should we go? Our children are dying of fear.”
Earlier, rescuers reported that 10 people were killed, including three local journalists, in a strike on a house in the Nusseirat camp. A fourth journalist was killed in Gaza City (north), according to the Hamas press office.
Fighting also continued in Shujaiya, a neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, where soldiers have been conducting a ground operation supported by air power since June 27.
The area is one of those in the Palestinian territory where the Israeli army has intervened again, after claiming to control them.
She said she killed “Hamas terrorists” and destroyed “weapons and infrastructure,” including tunnels, accusing “the enemy of seeking to reestablish a base” in the neighborhood.
Soldiers are also battling in Rafah (south), where witnesses reported heavy artillery fire in the city center. According to the army “terrorist cells have been eliminated” and “several tunnels destroyed and weapons seized.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said two of its employees were killed in al-Bureij (central) without giving further details.
The war threatens to take on a regional dimension with daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah on both sides of the border.
A “local official” of the powerful pro-Iranian movement, allied with Hamas, was killed by an Israeli drone attack on a vehicle near Baalbek, in eastern Lebanon, some 100 km from the border, according to a source close to Hezbollah.
The Israeli military confirmed that it had “operated in the Baalbek area to strike and eliminate… a key operative of Hezbollah’s air defense unit,” who it said “participated in the planning and execution of numerous terrorist attacks” against Israel and helped build the group’s “arsenal of Iranian weapons.”
Efforts for a ceasefire
In this context, new efforts are underway for a ceasefire in Gaza, in the run-up to a visit to the United States by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to address Congress on July 24.
Following talks Friday in Doha with the head of the Israeli Mossad, David Barnea, a team will continue negotiations in Qatar “next week”, Mr Netanyahu’s office said.
PHOTO GIL COHEN-MAGEN, ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Mossad Director David Barnea
He reported persistent “discrepancies” with Hamas, which for its part announced new “ideas”.
Mediation efforts led by Qatar, the United States and Egypt have so far come up against the demands of both sides.
Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are freed, with Hamas demanding a definitive ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before an agreement.
“It is important that an agreement be reached” for the return of the hostages, pleaded one of them, Almog Meir Jan, freed at the beginning of June in an army operation, in a message broadcast during a new rally in Tel Aviv in the evening against the Netanyahu government.