A deadly attack hit a school converted into emergency shelter in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, as Israeli forces continued a major offensive in the war-torn territory’s largest city, further displacing Palestinians.
A hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip said at least 29 people were killed in the attack on the school in nearby Abasan.
The Israeli military said its air force had carried out an attack on a “terrorist” in the area and was now investigating the incident.
In three Israeli attacks since Saturday on schools used by displaced Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, a total of at least 20 people have been killed, according to authorities and rescue workers.
In the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli troops, tanks and warplanes attacked Gaza City on the eve of new contacts with Qatar. Their aim was a hostage exchange and a ceasefire in the war that has been raging for ten months.
CIA Director William Burns and Israel’s Mossad chief David Barnea will travel to Qatar on Wednesday after Burns held talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo.
Hamas, whose attack on October 7 sparked the war, has watered down a key demand and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately escalating the fighting to prevent an agreement.
The Islamist group’s Qatar-based political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, said he had warned mediators that the “catastrophic consequences” of the recent fighting could “restart the negotiation process.”
Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, described the recent fighting in Gaza City as “the fiercest in months.”
The United Nations said tens of thousands of civilians have been affected by the escalation of fighting since the first of three evacuation orders for Gaza City was issued on June 27.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, said that “around 350,000 people are back on the streets” but “there is basically absolutely no safe place in Gaza”.
– “Hunger Campaign” –
After nearly two weeks of fighting in the eastern Gaza Strip district of Shujaiya, Israeli forces have expanded the fighting further to the east, west and south of the city.
Residents told AFP they had seen helicopter attacks, “explosions and numerous shootings” in the southwest of the city.
In other parts of the Gaza Strip, witnesses reported artillery shelling near the central Nuseirat refugee camp and west of Rafah in the south of the area.
The Israeli military said its air and ground forces were pursuing Palestinian militants in Gaza City, six months after it said it had dismantled Hamas’s “military structure” in the north of the territory.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed “appallment” at the way in which civilians, many of whom have already been displaced multiple times, have been ordered to go to areas where “military operations are ongoing and where civilians continue to be killed or injured”.
Thousands were seen marching along dusty streets past bombed-out buildings, mothers carrying their babies and others loading their belongings onto donkey carts.
Independent UN human rights experts accused Israel of conducting a “targeted hunger campaign” that had led to the deaths of children in the Gaza Strip and constituted “a form of genocide”.
“Since October 7, 34 Palestinians have died of malnutrition, the majority of them children,” said the experts, who were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.
The Israeli UN mission in Geneva accused the members of the panel of “spreading misinformation” and “supporting Hamas propaganda”.
– “Only lifeline” –
Yussef Jaber, 24, said there was hardly any food left in the north of the Gaza Strip and lamented “a life of shame and humiliation.”
“We have nothing except some flour and canned goods that make us sick,” he said. “We have no vegetables to cook and no meat either.”
The more than nine-month war has forced many hospitals across Gaza to remain closed. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said all of its facilities in the Gaza City area were out of service.
Jagan Chapagain, chairman of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said on social media platform X that “the closure of these vital medical facilities further worsens the situation of an already desolate health system.”
“These clinics and medical facilities are often the only lifeline for many civilians.”
According to an AFP news agency count based on Israeli figures, 1,195 people were killed in the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, most of them civilians.
The militants took 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in the Gaza Strip. According to the military, 42 of them are dead.
Israel responded with a military offensive that killed at least 38,243 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled area.
Hamas has signaled that it will abandon its demand for a “complete” ceasefire – which Israel has repeatedly rejected – as a prerequisite for the start of ceasefire talks brokered by Qatar and Egypt with the support of the United States.
Netanyahu’s office has set conditions, including that “any agreement will allow Israel to return and fight until all war aims are achieved.”
– Conflict with Hezbollah –
As the Gaza war raged, Israel also engaged in regular cross-border firefights with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, heightening fears of a full-scale war.
On Tuesday, Hezbollah released a video containing aerial surveillance footage of intelligence and military positions in the Israeli-annexed Syrian Golan Heights.
Two Israelis were killed by rocket fire in the Golan Heights on Tuesday, police said.
Earlier last week, a senior Hezbollah commander was killed in an Israeli attack that triggered a retaliatory attack with rockets and drones.
On the X-side, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to “cease the threats and violence” and to “withdraw troops” from the border area. This is in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended Hezbollah’s last major war in 2006.
If a full-scale conflict breaks out, Nasrallah “will be seen as the destroyer of Lebanon,” said Israel’s top diplomat.
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