On Friday, Israeli strikes hit several areas of the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian Territories:
Israeli strikes hit a Gaza refugee camp on Friday following a deadly attack on a UN-run school, as the war sparked by Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel entered its ninth month.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, devastated much of the Gaza Strip, uprooted most of its 2.4 million inhabitants and put them at risk of famine.
Diplomatic efforts to broker the first ceasefire since a week-long pause in November appear to have stalled, just a week after US President Joe Biden offered a new three-phase roadmap.
Hamas, which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007, has not yet responded to Biden’s proposal. Israel expressed openness to discussions, while insisting on pursuing its war objective of destroying the Palestinian Islamic group.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza said at least 37 people were killed in Thursday’s Israeli attack on the UN-run school in Nuseirat camp.
The Israeli army said its fighter jets killed nine “terrorists” in three classrooms where around 30 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were hiding.
The United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency, UNRWA, said hundreds of displaced Palestinians were sheltering at the school that was “hit without warning”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the attack as “another horrific example of the price civilians are paying.”
Attacks in Gaza
The United States, which provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid, urged its ally to be “fully” transparent about the attack.
“The government of Israel has said it will release more information about this attack, including the names of those who died in it. We expect them to be fully transparent in making this information public,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Israel accuses Hamas and its allies in Gaza of using schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, including facilities run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, as operational centers – accusations denied by the militants.
On Friday, attacks hit several areas of the Gaza Strip.
A day after the school was hit, the Nuseirat refugee camp faced renewed Israeli artillery shelling and airstrikes, eyewitnesses said.
A medical source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital said the Isa family’s home, near a medical center in the Bureij refugee camp, was targeted, leaving several injured.
Witnesses also confirmed Israeli strikes east of Deir al-Balah, as well as intense fire from Israeli army vehicles east of Bureij camp, where a fire broke out at a roundabout.
In Gaza City, casualties were reported from an Israeli missile attack on the Ashram family home near the Al-Salam mosque, according to a medical source at Baptist Hospital.
Six people were killed and several injured in an Israeli attack on Wafati’s house in Maghazi camp, a medical source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said.
Air Force jets also targeted the Al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, sources in the city on the southern border with Egypt said.
Gaza was also attacked from the sea, with Israeli warships shelling houses in the fishermen’s port area, among others, west of Gaza City, an AFP correspondent said.
Israeli isolation
The war was triggered by the Hamas attack on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took 251 hostages, 120 of whom remain in Gaza, including 41 who the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive killed at least 36,654 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-administered territory.
Israel has faced increasing diplomatic isolation, with international court cases accusing it of war crimes and several European countries recognizing a Palestinian state.
Spain, which last week sparked Israeli fury by formally recognizing Palestinian statehood, said on Thursday it would become the latest country to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted an invitation from US lawmakers to address Congress on July 24, a congressional source told AFP.
A week ago, Biden outlined what he called an Israeli plan to suspend fighting for six weeks while hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and aid deliveries to Gaza are stepped up.
G7 powers and Arab states backed the proposal, with 16 world leaders joining Biden’s call for Hamas to accept the deal.
“There is no time to waste. We call on Hamas to close this deal,” the joint statement said.
‘Only words’
Egyptian state news outlet Al-Qahera cited a high-level source on Thursday as saying that Cairo “has received positive signals from the Palestinian movement signaling its aspiration for a ceasefire.”
But Beirut-based senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan later cast doubt on the proposal, calling it “just words.”
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday that Hamas has not yet given its response on the truce plan.
The main points of contention include Hamas’s insistence on a permanent truce and Israel’s full withdrawal – demands that Israel has rejected.
The war has caused tensions to rise across the Middle East, with violence rising between Israel and its allies, on the one hand, and armed groups backed by Iran, on the other.
The Israeli military announced on Thursday that a soldier was killed in a drone strike by the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah the previous day in Hurfeish.
Israeli politicians have threatened more intense fighting against Hezbollah.
Netanyahu was in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, a day after saying Israel was “prepared for a very intense operation” along the border with Lebanon.
“The state of Israel is in a difficult campaign on many fronts,” he said. “This effort is being carried out amidst complicated international pressure on us.”
The US State Department’s Miller said any “escalation” in Lebanon would “greatly harm Israel’s overall security.”
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