Key Points
- Israel has targeted a school in Gaza, claiming it housed Hamas fighters.
- Gaza’s media office has denied Israel’s claims, calling the strike on the UN school in Nuseirat a “brutal crime”.
- Officials in Gaza said 27 civilians were killed in the attack.
Israel targeted a Gaza school on Thursday that it said contained a Hamas compound, killing fighters involved in the 7 October attack that sparked the eight-month war, but Gaza officials said the strike killed at least 27 people seeking shelter.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Gaza government media office, rejected Israel’s claims that the UN school in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, had hidden a Hamas command post.
“The occupation uses lying to the public opinion through false fabricated stories to justify the brutal crime it conducted against dozens of displaced people,” Thawabta told Reuters.
Israel’s military said that before the strike by Israeli fighter jets, it took steps to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.
Israel has said there will be no halt to fighting during ceasefire talks.
In an apparent blow to a , Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Wednesday the group would demand a permanent end to the war in Gaza and Israel’s withdrawal as part of a ceasefire plan.
Haniyeh’s remarks appeared to deliver the Palestinian militant group’s reply to Biden’s proposal. Washington had said it was waiting to hear an answer from Hamas to what Biden described as an Israeli initiative.
“The movement and factions of the resistance will deal seriously and positively with any agreement that is based on a comprehensive ending of the aggression and the complete withdrawal and prisoners swap,” Haniyeh said.
Asked whether Haniyeh’s remarks amounted to the group’s reply to Biden, a senior Hamas official replied to a text message from Reuters with a “thumbs up” emoji.
Since a brief week-long truce in November, all attempts to arrange a ceasefire have failed, with Hamas insisting on its demand for a permanent end to the conflict, while Israel says it’s prepared to discuss only temporary pauses until the militant group is defeated.
Israel has bombarded Gaza since , according to the Israeli government.
More than 36,000 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
The 7 October attack was a significant escalation in the long-standing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Israel announced a new operation against Hamas in central Gaza on Wednesday, where Palestinian medics said airstrikes had killed dozens of people.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had fought gun battles with Israeli forces on Wednesday in areas throughout the enclave and fired anti-tank rockets and shells.
Two children were among the dead laid out on Wednesday in the city’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, one of the last hospitals functioning in Gaza. Mourners said the children had been killed along with their mother, who had been unable to leave when others in the neighbourhood did.
“This is not war, it is destruction that words are unable to express,” said their father Abu Mohammed Abu Saif.
