Israeli military strikes yesterday killed multiple civilians at a UN shelter and hospital in the main combat zone in the Gaza Strip as the assault intensified on the besieged enclave’s Hamas rulers amid growing international uproar over the soaring death toll and deepening humanitarian crisis.
Israel’s military has said it has encircled Gaza City, the target of its offensive to crush Hamas, but yesterday offered a three-hour window for residents trapped by the fighting to flee south.
The new attacks came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region trying to find ways to ease the plight of the civilians caught in the fighting. He met with Arab foreign ministers yesterday in Jordan, the day after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insisted there can be no temporary ceasefire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.
Photo: AFP
The Israeli military has repeatedly demanded that northern Gaza’s 1.1 million residents flee south as it escalates bombardment of the north and closes in around Gaza City.
However, some of those traveling south were killed during their journey in the past few days, and Israel has continued bombing in the south, saying it is striking Hamas targets.
With wide swaths of residential neighborhoods leveled in airstrikes, most of northern Gaza’s remaining residents, estimated at about 300,000, have sought shelter in UN-run schools and in hospitals where they hope they would be safe, but Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit and damaged those shelters.
Photo: AFP
Yesterday, two strikes hit a UN school-turned-shelter just north of Gaza City, killing several people in tents in the schoolyard and women who were baking bread inside the building, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said.
Initial reports indicated that 20 people were killed, but the agency has not yet been able to verify the figure, said Juliette Touma, director of communications at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reported that 12 people were killed at the school and another 50 people wounded. About 18,000 Palestinians had been sheltering there.
Also on Saturday, two people were killed in a strike by the gate of Nasser Hospital in Gaza, health ministry spokesman Medhat Abbas said.
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