Israeli strikes hit a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after a deadly attack on a UN-run school, as the war Israel launched after the Hamas attack on October 7 entered its ninth month on Friday .
The conflict has left tens of thousands dead, ravaged much of the Gaza Strip and uprooted most of its 2.4 million residents who face the risk of famine.
Diplomatic efforts to achieve the first ceasefire since a week-long pause in fighting in November appear to have stalled, just a week after the new roadmap announced by US President Joe Biden.
On the ground, bombings carried out by aviation, artillery and the military navy continued across the entire territory controlled since 2007 by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, according to witnesses and local sources.
In Deir el-Balah, six people were killed and six others injured overnight by a missile strike on a family’s house in Al-Maghazi camp, according to a medical source.
In Gaza City, two people were killed and several others injured during an Israeli missile strike on a home, according to a hospital source.
According to an AFP correspondent, Israeli warships fired several shells on Friday at homes in the area of the fishing port of Sheikh Ajlin, west of Gaza City.
The army attacked with artillery the camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij, in the center of the Gaza Strip, as well as the town of Al-Qarara, near Khan Younes, and the city of Rafah, according to local sources.
Military operations in Rafah, a crowded town in the south of the Gaza Strip, have pushed a million Palestinians to flee, according to the UN, and led to the closure of the crossing point with Egypt, essential to the entry of international aid in the besieged territory.
Fleeing the fighting and bombings, Palestinians displaced in the Gaza Strip go to cool off at Deir el-Balah beach, even if it is polluted by sewage, according to images from AFPTV.
The sea offers them a respite “from insects, the heat […] and the smell of corpses,” Mohamed Ghaben, displaced multiple times within the territory since the start of the war, told AFP.
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 data.
During this attack, 251 people were taken as hostages. After a truce in November which notably allowed the release of around a hundred of them, 120 hostages are still being held in Gaza, 41 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli army.
In response to the October 7 attack, the Israeli army launched a deadly offensive in the small coastal territory where Hamas took power in 2007. At least 36,654 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed, according to reports. data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.
A hospital in the Gaza Strip on Thursday reported the deaths 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. which targeted “a Hamas base.”
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).
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.
On Thursday, the White House, in a joint statement with the leaders of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and South American countries, called on Israel and Hamas “to make the last 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.
But the contradictory demands of the two camps leave little hope of seeing the plan announced by Mr. Biden come to fruition.
Hamas says it is ready to accept a deal only if it includes a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
Despite international pressure, Israel, for its part, says it wants to destroy Hamas, which it considers a terrorist organization, as do the United States and the European Union.