The Israeli armed forces say they have carried out an air strike on an Islamist Hamas position inside a school run by the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA in the Gaza Strip. The military said “several terrorists” who had planned terrorist attacks and attacks on Israeli troops were killed.
The position in the school in Nuseirat in the center of the Gaza Strip served as a base for units of Hamas and the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad, which was also involved in the massacre on October 7 last year in Israel.
Hamas announced that 27 people were killed in the school for displaced people in Nuseirat. The health authority controlled by Hamas has not yet confirmed this.
Israel repeatedly accuses Hamas of operating from civilian facilities in the Gaza war, thereby endangering civilians or even deliberately using them as a human shield. The UNRWA relief agency itself hit the headlines in January because Israel claimed that twelve employees were involved in the October 7 massacre and that the organization as a whole had been infiltrated by Hamas.
At the same time, Hamas appears to reject US President Joe Biden’s ceasefire proposal. “The movement and the resistance factions will seriously and positively consider any agreement based on a complete end to the aggression, a complete Israeli withdrawal and a prisoner exchange,” said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
When asked by Reuters via text message whether Haniyeh’s comments were to be understood as the group’s response to Biden’s ceasefire proposal, a senior Hamas official responded via text message with a thumbs-up emoji.