At least 61 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza in the past two days as Israel's war on the besieged enclave enters its 12th month with little sign of relief for the Palestinian territory.
Israeli airstrikes killed more than a dozen people overnight and into Saturday, hospital and local officials said, as health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak.
Sources told A Jazeera that three women and two children were killed in the eastern Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza as a result of Israeli shelling.
Separately, the Gaza Civil Defense agency reported that an Israeli airstrike on a school converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians killed at least three people. The Civil Defense also said that 20 people were wounded in the attack on the Amr Ibn al-Aas school in the Abu Iskandar area of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza City.
The Israeli military said it carried out a “precise strike” on the school that targeted fighters “operating inside a Hamas command and control center… embedded within a compound that previously served as the Amr Ibn al-Aas school.”
'Relentless attacks'
Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said the whole of Gaza has been under relentless Israeli attacks since the early hours of this morning, particularly in the north.
“There has been a concentration of attacks in the town of Beit Lahiya, with the Israeli army shelling the area extensively with artillery,” he said.
“An airstrike also targeted an evacuation centre in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood of Gaza City. Several casualties are reported to have occurred as a result of the attack.”
In recent months, Israeli forces have attacked several schools housing displaced Palestinians, many of them in Gaza City, claiming the attacks targeted Hamas fighters.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israel's war has so far killed nearly 41,000 people. According to the United Nations, most of the dead are women and children.
Pro-Palestine protests in London
Meanwhile, crowds of protesters gathered in central London on Saturday against Israel's war in Gaza.
Protesters chanted slogans and carried banners as they marched through the capital towards the Israeli embassy in South Kensington.
“Pro-Palestinian protesters held a rally in London during the week in which British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said his country would immediately suspend 30 of the 350 licenses to export arms to Israel,” said Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego, reporting from London.
“But for the people we have spoken to here, the measure is not enough. As Lammy himself has said, this certainly does not go as far as in 1982, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher imposed a total arms embargo on Israel for its involvement in the Lebanon war.
“However, people here are demanding that more be done. They want an immediate end to all arms exports because we are about to complete 11 months of Israel’s war on Gaza and the situation seems to be getting worse.”
Investigation into activist's murder called for
The UN also called for a “full investigation” into the killing by Israeli forces of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, while protesting against illegal Israeli settlements in Beita in the occupied West Bank.
“We would like to see a full investigation into the circumstances and people held accountable,” UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told a news conference, adding that civilians “must be protected at all times.”
Eygi was “shot in the head” while taking part in Friday’s demonstration, the UN human rights office said.
His family also called for an investigation in a statement, saying “his presence in our lives was unnecessarily, illegally and violently taken by the Israeli army.”
