Israeli forces bombarded a Gaza refugee camp Friday after a deadly strike on a UN school there, as the war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel entered its ninth month.
Efforts to mediate the first ceasefire in the bloody conflict since a week-long pause in November appear to have stalled a week after US President Joe Biden offered a new roadmap.
Hamas has yet to respond to Biden’s proposal, while Israel has expressed openness to discussions but remains committed to destroying the Palestinian militant group.
In a new diplomatic push, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Israel and key regional partners Egypt, Jordan and Qatar from Monday on his eighth Middle East trip since the war began, the State Department said.
As Gaza faced Israeli attacks from land, sea, and air on Friday (Jun 7), witnesses said the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza was hit again, a day after the Israeli strike on the UN-run school.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah said at least 37 people were killed in Thursday’s air strike, which the Israeli military said targeted “terrorists” hiding in three classrooms.
On Friday the military as well as the Hamas-run government media office reported another Israeli strike on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in Al-Shati refugee camp.
The army said it targeted Hamas militants operating from a container on the northern Gaza school grounds.
An AFP photographer saw Palestinians inspecting the remains of the charred container after the strike that the media office said killed three people.
STRIKES ACROSS GAZA
UNRWA said hundreds of displaced Gazans were sheltering at the Nuseirat school targeted Thursday, which was “hit without prior warning”.
The agency’s chief, Philippe Lazzarini, said on X that despite UN premises being “damaged, destroyed, targeted or used for military purposes almost on a daily basis … no one is being held accountable”.
Israel accuses Hamas and its allies in Gaza of using civilian infrastructure, including UN-run facilities, as operational centres – charges the militants deny.
A separate Israeli strike late Thursday killed Nuseirat mayor Iyad al-Mughari and four family members as he visited a water pumping station, a municipality spokesman said Friday, with the army saying he was a Hamas operative.
Witnesses and the Israeli military reported strikes and fighting east of Deir al-Balah and near the Bureij camp.
A central Gaza hospital source said a strike on the Wafati home in the Maghazi camp killed six people.
Warships bombarded areas west of Gaza City, an AFP correspondent said, and the military released footage of troops in the southern city of Rafah.
Osama al-Kahlut of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society told AFP Israeli forces east of Deir al-Balah were firing on people along Gaza’s main thoroughfare, reporting “several wounded”.
