Israeli airstrikes hit a school used by displaced people in central Gaza on Saturday, killing dozens of people, as the country's negotiators prepared to meet with international mediators to discuss a ceasefire proposal.
At least 30 people sheltering at a girls' school in Deir Al-Balah were taken to Al Aqsa Hospital and declared dead after a strike the Israeli military said targeted a Hamas command and control center used to store weapons and plan attacks.
The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 11 people were killed in other attacks on Saturday.
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Destroyed buildings are seen in the Gaza Strip from southern Israel on July 24, 2024. (Tsafrir Abayov)
Near the hospital, Associated Press reporters saw an ambulance speeding down a dusty road as a few people ran in the opposite direction. An injured man lay on a stretcher on the ground. A body covered with a blanket and a dead toddler lay inside the ambulance.
Inside the school, classrooms were in ruins. People were seen searching for victims under the rubble and some were collecting the remains of the dead.
Earlier, the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned attack on Khan Younis on Saturday.
The evacuation order came in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated in the area. The military said it was planning an operation against Hamas militants in the town, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has asked thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge during the war.
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Amal Abdel-Hadi, left, and Nour Abdel-Hadi, right, react next to their injured 2-year-old niece, Siwar, on July 24, 2024, following an Israeli airstrike on the girl's home. (Abdel Kareem Hana)
The planned attack comes a day before officials from the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Israel are set to meet in Italy to discuss ongoing hostage-taking and cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Sunday with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad Director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel, according to U.S. and Egyptian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
It was the second evacuation order issued in a week that included targeting part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer (about 20-square-mile) expanse covered in tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, the United Nations and aid groups say. Israel expanded the zone in May to accommodate people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population had been concentrated at the time.
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Displaced Palestinians reside in a makeshift tent camp in the Muwasi area of southern Gaza, January 1, 2024. (Fatima Shbair, Archive)
According to Israeli estimates, around 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being uprooted several times in search of safety during Israel's punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the army said the area could still be attacked and that it was “not a safe area, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.
The UN refugee agency for Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering there were constantly being displaced.
“Calling the orders evacuation orders doesn't do justice to what they mean,” said Juliette Touma, the agency's communications director. “They are forced displacement orders. What happens is that when people receive these orders, they have very little time to move.”
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Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven people in Israeli airstrikes overnight in Zawaida in central Gaza. Members of two families — fathers and their two children, as well as a mother and her two children — were wrapped in traditional white Islamic shrouds as community members gathered to conduct the funerals. As men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, weeping friends and neighbors approached individually to pay their last respects.
Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah confirmed the count and Associated Press journalists viewed the bodies.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory's health ministry, which makes no distinction between combatants and civilians in its counts. The U.N. estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now alone, and the number has likely risen since then.
The war began on October 7 with an attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 people remain in Gaza and about a third of them are believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
