Israel-Hamas War and Gaza News: Latest Updates

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

*******-****** War and Gaza News: Latest Updates

An ******** airstrike early Saturday hit a school compound in northern Gaza where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, ******** dozens of people, according to Gazan officials.

The strike in Gaza City, the latest in a string of attacks on schools turned into shelters, drew strong condemnation from the ********* Union and the ******* Nations, with Josep Borrell Fontelles, the top E.U. diplomat, saying that “there’s no justification for these massacres.”

The White House, too, issued a statement about the strike, with a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, Sean Savett, saying that the Biden administration was “deeply concerned” about reports of civilian casualties and “asking for further details” from *******.

The series of ******** strikes has taken place alongside mounting international pressure on ******* to conclude a deal for a cease-***** and exchange hostages held in Gaza for ************ detainees. President Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar said this week in a ****** statement that “the time has come.”

Mr. Savett on Saturday emphasized that call. “We mourn every ************ civilian lost in this conflict, including children, and far too many civilians continue to be ******* and wounded,” he said. “This underscores the urgency of a cease-***** and ******** deal, which we continue to work tirelessly to achieve.”

The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said more than 90 were ******* in Saturday’s airstrike, but that number could not be confirmed, and two doctors at one hospital in the area gave slightly lower totals. Health officials in Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants when reporting casualties.

The ******** military on Saturday evening said it had used three munitions and ******* at least 19 Islamic ****** and ****** fighters. It did not provide an overall ****** toll for the strike, and asserted that ******** ****** “cannot cause the amount of damage that is being reported.”

The military’s chief spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Saturday in a video statement that “according to our intelligence, no women and children were present” in the building hit by the airstrike. Regarding the casualty count, he said, “These figures do not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, and they do not match the information” of the ******** military.

The Civil Defense emergency service said the strike hit as more than 200 people had gathered before sunrise in a prayer hall to worship. More than 2,000 displaced people had been staying at the shelter, the Al-Tabaeen school in the Al-Daraj neighborhood, Civil Defense said.

The ******** military says that ****** embeds itself among civilians to use them as human shields and uses school buildings as centers of operations — while international law experts have said ******* still has a responsibility to protect civilians. At least 17 school buildings in Gaza have been targeted in the past month, with at least 163 Palestinians ******* in the attacks, the U.N. human rights office said in a report this week.

The Civil Defense spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, said 11 children and six women were among the ***** in Saturday’s *******, adding that many people were seriously wounded.

The airstrike hit two floors, one of which was used for communal prayers and the other for sheltering women and children, Mr. Basal said. He said the prayer hall inside the school complex has been used for worship since the beginning of the 10-month war.

People grieved following an ******** strike on a school turned shelter on Saturday.Credit…Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Many of those wounded in the ******** strike, including children, were arriving with severe burns covering much of their bodies, said Tayseer al-Tanna, a surgeon at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, who called the scene “very difficult to watch.”

Fadel Naim, a medical official at Al-Ahli Hospital who served for years as dean of the medical college at the Islamic University of Gaza, widely seen as a ****** stronghold, said the hospital had received at least 70 bodies since Saturday morning. The strike was followed by a flood of people searching for loved ones missing in the wake of the **********, he said.

Khamis Elessi, a doctor at the same hospital, in Gaza City, said more than 73 identified bodies were brought to the hospital morgue, as were another 10 who have yet to be identified because they were disfigured in the **********.

The Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers are believed to be broadly reliable, though there is often uncertainty in the immediate aftermath of specific strikes, and the destruction of the territory’s health system has made tolls ******* to track.

******** forces have recently been scaling up military attacks throughout Gaza in areas where they had previously fought ******, saying the fighters had regrouped.

People checking the damage after a Saturday strike on a school turned shelter.Credit…Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Troops had previously moved in on the Al-Daraj neighborhood in early July as part of a renewed ground offensive in Gaza City. But the ******** military appears to have wound down its ground operation there, even as it continued to conduct airstrikes in the area.

Many of its offensives in recent days have targeted school grounds — a large number of which have been converted into makeshift shelters. The U.N. has said that strikes were escalating and that it was “horrified by the unfolding pattern.”

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency for ************ refugees, called the deadly ******* “another day of horror” in Gaza. He called on all sides not to harm civilians or use schools for military purposes.

“It’s time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end,” he said on social media. “We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm.”

The U.N. and other rights organizations have repeatedly said that there is no safe place in Gaza as areas people are ordered to evacuate to are subsequently targeted by ******** airstrikes. Almost the entire population of Gaza — more than two million Palestinians — has been displaced multiple times.

Ameera Harouda and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#IsraelHamas #War #Gaza #News #Latest #Updates

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

For verified travel tips and real support, visit: https://hopzone.eu/