Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza killed 52 people and injured dozens, according to local health officials, as the military continued its onslaught on the besieged Palestinian territory.
Children were among at least 36 killed as Israeli forces targeted a school housing displaced people in the Daraj neighbourhood of Gaza City on Sunday, health officials said. Images circulating on social media showed badly burned bodies lying in the destroyed school.
A senior rescue service official and a journalist were killed in separate strikes on Khan Younis in the south, Jabalia in the north and Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, Reuters reported.
Journalist Hassan Majdi Abu Warda and several of his family members were killed after Israeli forces struck his house in Jabalia on Sunday.
His death took the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Israel’s war on Gaza to 220, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Strip.
Ashraf Abu Nar, a senior official in the Gazan civil emergency service, and his wife were killed in the Nuseirat airstrike.
Yaqeen Hammad, an 11-year-old social media celebrity, was also killed in the Israeli raids, Al Jazeera reported. Children account for 31 per cent of Palestinians killed in Israel’s nearly two-year-long offensive on Gaza, the health ministry said.
Israel stepped up its military operations in the territory in early May saying it was seeking to eliminate Hamas’s military and governing capabilities and bring back the remaining hostages who were taken in October 2023.
Gaza’s medics said Israel had taken control of around 77 per cent of the territory either through ground forces or evacuation orders and bombardments that kept residents away from their homes.
Despite mounting international pressure on Israel to lift a blockade on aid supplies in the face of warnings of looming famine, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that Israel was determined to control the whole of Gaza.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres last week sounded the alarm over “atrocious levels of death and destruction” by Israel in Gaza while warning that Israeli forces were allowing “a teaspoon of aid” into Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli defence body overseeing aid for Gaza, said 107 trucks of aid entered Sunday, about a sixth of the 600 trucks that entered the embattled territory during the ceasefire earlier this year.
Israel blocked all food, medicine and fuel from entering Gaza for almost three months before letting a small number of aid trucks enter last week after warnings about famine and pressure from some of Israel’s top allies.
“Palestinians in Gaza are enduring what may be the cruelest phase of this cruel conflict,” the UN secretary general said on Friday.
