Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes killed at least 100 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 31 or more who were sheltering at a school, according to medics in the Hamas-ruled enclave, in a stepped-up offensive that Israel’s military says is intended to pressure Hamas to free hostages and eventually expel the militant group. The bodies of 14 children and five women were recovered from the school in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City, and the death toll could rise because some of the 70 wounded sustained critical injuries, said Health Ministry spokesman Zaher al-Wahidi.
The Civil Defense rescue agency in Gaza said Friday that at least 31 people were killed in the strike on the school, with around 100 others injured. More than 30 other Gaza residents were killed in strikes on homes in the nearby neighborhood of Shijaiyah, al-Wahidi said, citing records at Ahli Hospital.
The Israeli military said it struck a “Hamas command and control center” in the Gaza City area, and that it took steps to lessen harm to civilians. Israel gave the same reason — striking Hamas militants in a “command and control center” — for attacking a United Nations building used as a shelter a day earlier, killing at least 17 people.
Hamas, which had long been designated a terrorist organization by Israel and the U.S. even before it carried out the brutal Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, called the strike on the school a “heinous massacre” of innocent civilians.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty
Israel has long accused Hamas of hiding weapons and fighters in and around civilian infrastructure, but the Israel Defense Forces provided no immediate evidence to back up its claim that Hamas commanders were present in the Gaza school or the U.N. building it bombed this week.
The strikes came as Israel’s military ordered more residents in parts of northern Gaza to evacuate west and south to shelters, warning that it planned to “work with extreme force in your area.” A number of the Palestinians fleeing the targeted areas did so on foot, with some carrying their belongings on their backs and others using donkey carts.
“My wife and I have been walking for three hours covering only one kilometer,” said Mohammad Ermana, 72. The couple, clasping hands, each walked with a cane. “I’m searching for shelters every hour now, not every day,” he said.
Israel has issued sweeping evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza ahead of expected expansions in its ground operations. The U.N. humanitarian office said around 280,000 Palestinians have been displaced since Israel abruptly ended a ceasefire with Hamas last month that had been brokered by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar.
The fresh evacuation orders came a day after senior government officials said Israel would seize large parts of the Palestinian territory and establish a new security corridor across it. Israel has imposed a monthlong blockade on food, fuel and humanitarian aid on Gaza that has left civilians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle — a tactic that rights groups say is a war crime. Israel says it is intended to pressure Hamas to release hostages and disarm.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for the release of more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The group has rejected demands that it lay down its arms or leave the territory.
Overnight strikes by Israel killed at least 55 people in the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said Thursday.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty
In the southern city of Khan Younis, officials said the bodies of 14 people had been taken to Nasser Hospital – nine of them from the same family. The dead included five children and four women. The bodies of another 19 people, including five children aged between 1 and 7 years and a pregnant woman, were taken to the European hospital near Khan Younis, hospital officials said. In Gaza City, 21 bodies were taken to Ahli hospital, including those of seven children.
Later in the day, strikes killed four more people in Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital, and another two people were killed in central Gaza and taken to Al Aqsa Hospital.
The attacks came as the Israeli military promised an independent investigation of a March 23 operation in which its forces opened fire on ambulances in southern Gaza. U.N. officials say 15 Palestinian medics and emergency responders were killed, and their bodies and ambulances were buried by Israeli soldiers in a mass grave.
The military initially said the ambulances were operating suspiciously and that nine militants were killed. The military said the probe would be led by an expert fact-finding body “responsible for examining exceptional incidents” during the war. Rights groups say such Israeli investigations are often lacking and that soldiers are rarely punished.
The head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Younes Al-Khatib, said Thursday he believed some of the medics were still alive when they were overtaken by Israeli forces. The organization’s radio dispatchers heard a conversation in Hebrew between medics and Israeli soldiers after the ambulances had come under fire, Al-Khatib told members of the U.N. Security Council.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, told the U.N. Security Council he was turning over a video he obtained, allegedly showing the moments leading up to the Israeli killing of 15 humanitarian workers in Gaza.
Mansour said the video shows that the aid workers, including eight members of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, were traveling in emergency vehicles with the lights on at night to deconflict with Israeli Defense Forces. But, Mansour said, the video “found on the body of one of the martyrs,” shows that the Israeli army ambushed the vehicle despite the emergency lights.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 50,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants but says more than half of those killed were women and children. In an update on Friday, the ministry said 1,249 people had been killed in Gaza since March 18, when Israel resumed strikes, ending a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.
The death toll of the Israeli aggression has risen to 50,609 martyrs
Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has left most of Gaza in ruins and at its height displaced around 90% of the population.
The war began when Israel retaliated immediately for the Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw 251 others taken as hostages back into Gaza, most of whom have since been released in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Israel rescued eight living hostages and has recovered dozens of bodies.
