LAST UPDATE | 10 Jul
ISRAELI FORCES LAUNCHED more deadly strikes across Gaza today, which said it targeted Hamas militants operating from inside a UN agency building.
The Israeli army also said it was reviewing an attack yesterday in which hospital sources said at least 29 people were killed in a nearby school in the southern Khan Yunis area – the fourth attack on a school building in four days.
Early today, four people were killed and one critically wounded in the bombing of a house in the central town of Nuseirat, according to a hospital source.
And two people were killed and six injured in another strike on a home in Bani Suhaila, near Khan Yunis, according to another hospital source.
Israel has stepped up air and ground attacks in Gaza City and southern Gaza since issuing evacuation orders for tens of thousands of people in the war-stricken Palestinian territory.
The heightened military strikes come as Israeli officials start talks in Qatar today on reaching a truce in the war raging since the 7 October Hamas attacks.
The Israeli military said that one overnight attack in Gaza City targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets operating from inside the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinians UNRWA.
The UN agency has not had control of the building since October.
Israeli forces said in February they had found a Hamas tunnel underneath the headquarters.
The military said the militants were “operating inside UNRWA’s headquarters in the area and using it as a base to conduct attacks on IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) troops in the central Gaza Strip”.
It said that militants had been “eliminated” and “large amounts of weapons” found.
UNRWA had no immediate comment on the attack, but has said it has “no way to verify” claims that its facilities are being used by Hamas and its allies.
Meanwhile, yesterday’s deadly strike near the Al-Awda school in Abasan, near Khan Yunis, brought new condemnation from Hamas over the Israeli military tactics.
The Hamas government said a “majority” of the dead were women and children.
The Israeli military said the air force had “struck a terrorist from Hamas’ military wing who took part, among other terrorist activities, in the 7 October brutal massacre” in southern Israel.
It was the fourth time in four days that Gaza school buildings sheltering the displaced had been hit.
The military said it was “looking into the reports that civilians were harmed, adjacent to the Al Awda school”, which it acknowledged was “near the location of the strike. The incident is under review.”
The 7 October attack resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.
Israel’s military offensive has killed at least 38,243 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures released yesterday by Gaza’s health ministry.
After almost two weeks of battles in Gaza City’s eastern Shujaiya district, Israeli forces have extended the fighting further into the city’s east, west and south.
Residents told AFP they saw helicopter strikes, “explosions, and numerous gun battles” in the city’s southwest.
Elsewhere in Gaza, witnesses reported artillery shelling near the central Nuseirat refugee camp and west of Rafah, in the territory’s south.
Israel’s 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 framework” in the territory’s north.
The UN Human Rights Office said it was “appalled” at the way civilians, many of whom have been displaced multiple times, have been ordered to head to areas where “military operations are ongoing and where civilians continue to be killed and injured”.
Thousands were seen marching down dusty roads past bombed-out buildings, with mothers carrying babies and others packing belongings onto donkey carts.
Independent UN rights experts accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of Gazan children and constituted “a form of genocidal violence”.
“Thirty-four Palestinians have died from malnutrition since 7 October, the majority being children,” said the experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.
Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva accused the panel’s members of “spreading misinformation” and “supporting Hamas propaganda”.
As the Gaza war has raged on, Israel has also exchanged regular cross-border fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, heightening fears of an all-out war.
Hezbollah yesterday released a video showing aerial surveillance footage it said was taken over intelligence and military positions in the Israeli-annexed Syrian Golan Heights.
Rocket fire on Tuesday killed two Israelis in the Golan Heights, police said.
It came after an Israeli strike last week killed a senior Hezbollah commander, prompting retaliatory barrages of rockets and drones.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, on X, told Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to “stop the threats and violence”, and “withdraw” forces from the border area, in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended their latest major war in 2006.
If a full-blown conflict breaks out, Israel’s top diplomat said Nasrallah “will be considered the destroyer of Lebanon”.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say