Overnight Israeli airstrikes in central Gaza killed at least 18 people, including children, a day after 33 were killed at a United Nations-run school sheltering displaced Palestinian families, health officials said Friday.
Strikes hit the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps and Deir al-Balah and Zawaiyda towns, they said. Four children and one woman were among those killed as well as the mayor of the Nuseirat municipality, according to hospital records.
Israel’s army said Friday it was continuing operations in parts of Central Gaza. It said its troops had killed dozens of militants, located tunnel shafts and destroyed infrastructure in the area.
The strikes came a day after at least 33 people were killed at a UN-run school in the Nuseirat refugee camp which Israel said was being used as a Hamas compound, without providing evidence.
International pressure has been mounting on Israel to limit civilian bloodshed in its war against Hamas. Spain’s foreign minister has announced it would ask a United Nations court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Israel strongly denies the accusation.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed by eight months of Israeli bombardments and ground offensives in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians who are facing widespread hunger. United Nations agencies say over 1 million in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July.
Israel launched the war after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Around 80 hostages captured on Oct. 7 are believed to still be alive in Gaza, alongside the remains of 43 others.
Here’s the latest:
Several wounded in West Bank fire
RAMALLAH — Several people were wounded when settlers set fire to a northern West Bank village, a local official said Friday.
Hani Odeh, head of Qusra’s municipality council, told The Associated Press that settlers set fire in the area Thursday night, attacking houses, burning warehouses and destroying trees.
Videos seen by The Associated Press show several fires blazing with plumes of smoke in the air. Three people were injured, one by live ammunition and the others by live bullets, said Odeh.
The army told the AP that Israeli civilians lit Palestinian property on fire Thursday evening. It said there was a violent confrontation between Israeli civilians and Palestinians with mutual rock throwing and the army dispersed them by firing shots in the air.
Violence has surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza.
The Health Ministry, part of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, says around 530 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war.
18 killed in overnight airstrikes
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza — Palestinian health officials say at least 18 people were killed, including children, in Israeli airstrikes overnight across Central Gaza.
Strikes hit the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps and Deir al-Balah and Zawaiyda towns, they said Friday. The bodies were taken to the al-Aqsa hospital where an Associated Press journalist counted them.
Four children and one woman were among those killed as well as the mayor of the Nuseirat municipality, according to hospital records.
Israel’s army said Friday it was continuing operations in parts of Central Gaza including eastern Bureji and Deir al-Balah. It said its troops had killed dozens of militants, located tunnel shafts and destroyed infrastructure in the area.
The strikes come a day after at least 33 people were killed at a United Nations-run school sheltering displaced Palestinian families. Israel said the school was being used as a Hamas compound, without providing evidence.
Israel’s military said it was not aware of any civilian casualties in the strike on the school in Nuseirat refugee camp, and later said it had confirmed killing nine militants.
Unemployment nears 80 per cent: UN
JERUSALEM — Unemployment in Gaza has reached nearly 80 per cent since the war erupted eight months ago, a new United Nations report said Friday.
The United Nations International Labour Organization and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said the war has plunged Gaza as well as the West Bank into economic crisis. In Gaza, virtually the entire private sector ground to a halt or significantly reduced, losing more than 85 per cent of its production value — the equivalent of more than US$810 million– during the first half of the war, said the report.
In the West Bank, unemployment reached 32 per cent bringing the average rate across both areas to more than 50 per cent. The findings don’t include people who left the workforce because they couldn’t find jobs.
This is the fourth report since the war began on Oct 7. when Hamas militants stormed southern Israel killing some 1,200 people.
A separate report last month by the UN said the unprecedented destruction from the war in Gaza would take at least until 2040 to restore
U.S. urged to stop sending weapons
The U.S. civil rights group NAACP has called on the Biden administration to end the shipment of weapons to Israel for use in attacks on Gaza.
It said Thursday that President Joe Biden’s three-stage proposal for a ceasefire and the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas does not go far enough.
“Over the past months, we have been forced to bear witness to unspeakable violence, affecting innocent civilians, which is unacceptable,” President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “It is one thing to call for a ceasefire, it is another to take the measures necessary to work towards liberation for all.”
The group also urged an end of artillery shipments to states that supply weapons to Hamas.
The NAACP appears to be the first legacy U.S. civil rights organization to call for a ceasefire. However, racial justice activists and the Black Lives Matter movement have been calling for a ceasefire since shortly after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Militants killed about 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage in the attack.
Since Israel’s offensive in response to that attack, over 36,000 Palestinians have died according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Gaza ceasefire resolution circulated
UNITED NATIONS — The United States has circulated a revised Security Council draft resolution that says a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza must be agreed to by Israel and Hamas.
It also spells out a three-phase plan to end the eight-month war and start the reconstruction of the devastated Gaza Strip that it says Israel has accepted and calls on Hamas to accept.
In exchange for the agreement by both parties to a permanent ceasefire, the plan says all Israeli hostages in Gaza will be released and all Israeli forces will withdraw from Gaza.
But Israel is privately objecting to its close ally’s latest attempt to stop the war.
An Israeli official told The Associated Press that the language overlooks Israel’s stated aim of destroying Hamas as a military force. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussion.
Because Israel believes that Hamas will engage in future military attacks, it is wary of signing a document that specifically stipulates a ceasefire, the official said. That language has a more permanent implication than a “cessation of hostilities,” which has also been mentioned in draft discussions.
Israel also objects to proposed language that “rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip.”
That includes “actions that reduce the territory of Gaza, such as through the permanent establishment officially or unofficially of so-called buffer zones,” which Israel has already said it plans.
Far-right members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have threatened to bring down the coalition if he signs onto a ceasefire deal.
Egyptian and Qatari mediators have told top Biden administration officials in the Middle East that they expect Hamas will submit its formal response to the latest hostage and ceasefire offer in the coming days, according to a U.S. official.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said ongoing talks in Doha and Cairo have been constructive, but that Hamas has still not delivered its formal response to the three-phase deal that President Joe Biden outlined last week.
Hamas has said it viewed the offer “positively” and called on Israel to declare an explicit commitment to the agreement.
More than a dozen countries joined the U.S. in a statement Thursday to show support for the proposed deal.
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Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer, Michael Weissenstein and Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
Fewer women, children killed at school
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The hospital where bodies were brought after an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip has amended its records to show that fewer women and children were among those killed.
The Israeli military says it carried out a precise strike Thursday on three classrooms in the UN-run school where it says around 30 Palestinian militants were planning and orchestrating attacks. It said it has confirmed killing nine militants.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital initially reported that nine women and 14 children were among 33 people killed in the strike on the school.
The hospital morgue later amended those records to show that the dead included three women, nine children and 21 men. It was not immediately clear what caused the discrepancy.
Spain applies to join genocide case
MADRID — Spain will ask a United Nations court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, its foreign minister announced.
Spain is the first European country to take the step after South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice in late 2023. It alleged that Israel was breaching the genocide convention in its military assault that has laid waste to large swaths of Gaza.
Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Libya and the Palestinians have already requested to join the case currently being heard at the court in The Hague, Netherlands.
The court has ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire for the enclave. Israel has not complied.
Spain’s request on Thursday to join the case is the latest move by the government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to support peacemaking efforts in Gaza.
