DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: An Israeli strike on a school where displaced people were sheltering in the central Gaza Strip killed at least 17 people on Thursday, mostly women and children, Palestinian medical officials said.
Another 42 people were wounded in the strike in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp, according to the Awda Hospital, which received the casualties. Among the dead were seven children as young as 11 months, as well as three women.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israel has carried out several strikes on schools-turned-shelters in recent months, saying it precisely targets Hamas militants hiding out among civilians. The strikes often kill women and children.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken meanwhile announced another $135 million in aid to the Palestinians, saying it is critical that aid enters Gaza.
Blinken spoke in Qatar on Thursday on his 11th visit to the region since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. The United States has pressed Israel to allow more aid into the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war has displaced around 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into tent camps along the coast after entire neighborhoods in many areas were pounded to rubble.
Months of ceasefire negotiations brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar sputtered to a halt over the summer. The war has meanwhile expanded to Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion more than three weeks ago after trading fire with the Hezbollah militant group for much of the past year.
The United States hopes to renew the negotiations after Israeli forces killed top Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza last week, but neither side has shown any sign of moderating its demands.
Palestinian officials say an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza has killed 17
https://arab.news/24kyj
Palestinian officials say an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza has killed 17
- Another 42 people were wounded in the strike in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp
- Israel has carried out several strikes on schools-turned-shelters in recent months
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
