Israel stepped up its strikes on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, where five bombings, including on a school sheltering displaced people, left 57 dead, according to local authorities, after American criticism of the high number of civilian casualties.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the army must “further increase pressure on Hamas,” which carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 that sparked war in the Palestinian territory.
The Palestinian Islamist movement “is under increasing pressure because we are hurting it, we are eliminating its top commanders and thousands of its terrorists. This is exactly the time to increase the pressure further,” Netanyahu said.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “multiple strikes across the Gaza Strip” on Tuesday left “dozens dead and wounded.”
PHOTO RAMADAN ABED, REUTERS
Palestinians inspect a school run by a UN agency in the Nusseirat refugee camp on Tuesday, following an Israeli strike.
One of them took place “a few hundred meters” from a United Nations center in Deir el-Balah, a town in the center of the territory that is home to many displaced people.
The US State Department said on Monday that the number of civilian casualties “remained unacceptable” in the Gaza Strip, where the war has left tens of thousands dead.
On Tuesday evening and in the early hours of Wednesday, the Gaza Civil Defense, an organization dependent on Hamas, reported 57 deaths in five Israeli strikes and “dozens of wounded.”
The strikes took place near a gas station in Al-Mawasi near Khan Younis, on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the Nuseirat refugee camp, near a roundabout in Beit Lahia, on a house in Al-Zawaida and finally on a mosque in the same Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, according to the Civil Defense.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it had targeted “terrorists using an UNRWA school in the Nusseirat region” and “a company leader” of Islamic Jihad “in the west of Khan Younis.”
PHOTO RAMADAN ABED, REUTERS
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house.
The army said it had taken “numerous measures” to reduce the risk of hitting civilians in the strike on the school and once again accused Hamas of hiding behind civilians and using the population as a human shield, something Hamas regularly denies.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced as the fighting has progressed, often several times since the start of the war, according to United Nations estimates.
Many are sheltering in buildings, including schools, but also in the courtyards of clinics and hospitals.
“Catastrophic human toll”
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza into southern Israel, which killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted, 116 are still being held in Gaza, 42 of whom are dead, according to the army.
In response, Israel launched an offensive that has so far killed 38,713 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry.
Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants to continue the war until the destruction of Hamas, which has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007 and is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union, and the release of all hostages.
PHOTO SAHER ALGHORRA, ARCHIVES ASSOCIATED PRESS
Palestinians watch the aftermath of the Israeli airstrike on a UN-run school that killed dozens in the Nusseirat refugee camp.
Denouncing “massacres” committed by Israel “against unarmed civilians,” a Hamas leader announced Sunday that the movement was suspending its participation in indirect negotiations for a ceasefire, but was “ready” to return to these discussions when the Israeli government demonstrated a “serious will” to succeed.
On Saturday, an Israeli strike left 92 dead, according to Hamas, in the Al-Mawasi sector, designated for several months as a “humanitarian zone” by Israel.
The Israeli army claimed to have targeted two Hamas military leaders.
French diplomacy on Tuesday denounced “the strikes of recent days” which “add to the catastrophic human toll among the population.”
Several NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World, have denounced the “massacres” in “security zones”.
“Urgent” situation
These strikes “worsen the humanitarian catastrophe” while NGOs continue “to come up against the obstacles imposed by the continuation of Israeli military operations”, MSF deplored on Monday evening.
The capture of the Rafah crossing point on the Egyptian border by the Israelis in early May caused a “complete halt” in the delivery of aid, according to NGOs, which claim that 50% of households are classified as “urgent” due to the risk of famine in the north of the territory.
Israel blames UN for blocking aid deliveries.
The UN particularly denounces the obstacles placed by Israel to the entry and distribution of fuel, essential for the operation of generators in the Gaza Strip, which has been besieged and deprived of electricity for more than nine months.
The UN said on Tuesday that it had been able to recover around 80,000 litres of fuel each day over the past two weeks in order to distribute them in the territory, while “400,000 litres per day are needed for basic humanitarian operations”.