A hospital in the Gaza Strip on Thursday reported the death of at least 37 people in a bombing of a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), with the Israeli army claiming responsibility for the strike. was targeting “a Hamas base.”
On the eve of entering the ninth month of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Palestinian territory, US President Joe Biden and 16 other leaders urged Hamas to accept a ceasefire agreement currently on table.
In the meantime, Israel is relentlessly continuing its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in response to the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on October 7 on Israeli soil.
The Israeli military said in a statement that “army warplanes… carried out a precise strike on a Hamas base located inside an Unrwa school in the Nousseirat area » (center), claiming to have eliminated in this attack “several terrorists” having taken part, according to her, in the attack of October 7.
The Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir el-Balah, located near Nousseirat, reported at least 37 deaths in this school where, according to Unrwa, there were 6,000 displaced people.
The United States called on Israel to be “fully transparent,” including by “making public” the “names of the people” killed in the strike, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Hamas condemned a “continuing war of extermination and ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinian people.
Unrwa leader Philippe Lazzarini claimed that Israel had struck “without prior warning” the school, transformed into a shelter for the population displaced by the fighting.
This is “another terrifying example of the price paid by civilians […] who are just trying to survive,” regretted the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, according to his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.
The war in the Gaza Strip was sparked by the attack in southern Israel by Hamas commandos infiltrating from Palestinian territory on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians killed that that day, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
Some 251 people were taken hostage in the attack. After a truce in November that resulted in the release of about 100 of them, 120 hostages are still being held in Gaza, 41 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli army.
In addition to the strike on the Unrwa school, witnesses also indicated that rocket attacks took place in the central Gaza Strip.
According to a local source, Israeli aircraft also carried out several strikes in the east and center of the southern city of Rafah on the border with Egypt, where the Israeli army launched ground operations early may.
The offensive on Rafah, which forced a million Palestinians to flee the city according to the UN, also led to the closure of the crossing point with Egypt, essential for the entry of international aid into the besieged territory, which had a population of some 2.4 million at the start of the war.
On the diplomatic level, Joe Biden presented on May 31 a road map proposed, according to him, by Israel which provides, in a first phase, a six-week ceasefire accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of Gaza , the release of certain hostages kidnapped during the Hamas attack and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
“It is time for this war to end and this agreement is a necessary starting point,” the White House said Thursday in a joint statement with the leaders of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and South American countries, calling on Israel and Hamas “to make the final necessary compromises.”
Hamas will present its response to this proposal “in the coming days,” said a “senior official” on Thursday cited by Al-Qahera News, a media outlet close to the Egyptian intelligence services, reporting “positive signals” from the Islamist movement. Palestinian.
But the contradictory demands of the two camps leave little hope of seeing the plan announced by Mr. Biden come to fruition.
“So far, the Americans have not presented any document that commits them to respecting what Biden said,” he continued, adding that Hamas was ready to accept a deal only if it understands the demands of movement, including a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
Faced with international pressure, Israel says it wants to destroy Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization, as do the United States and the European Union.
“Israel is waging a difficult campaign on many fronts […] against a backdrop of complex international pressures,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit Thursday to a military command center in the occupied West Bank.
Finally, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said in Baghdad on Thursday that the Palestinian Authority based in the occupied West Bank was ready to restore “unified” Palestinian leadership after the war ravaging the Gaza Strip.