Israeli forces kill 15 Palestinians in attack targeting school sheltering families
Listen to article
At least 15 Palestinians, including a journalist, were killed Wednesday after Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza's Abu Hameesa School sheltering displaced families in northern Gaza, according to local health officials, as Israel ramped up its destruction of buildings in southern Rafah.
Two strikes reportedly targeted the Karama School in Gaza City's Tuffah district.
Among the dead was journalist Nour Abdu, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed since the conflict began to 213, according to the Gaza media office.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.
This attack came just a day after two Israeli strikes on another school in central Gaza killed at least 29 people, including several women and children.
The Israeli army said it had targeted a 'command center' allegedly used by militants, claiming it housed 'terrorists.'
Meanwhile, fighting intensified in southern Gaza.
In Khan Younis, Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades said its fighters detonated a minefield targeting an Israeli armoured unit, followed by a barrage of mortar shells.
In Rafah, witnesses and Hamas sources reported that Israeli troops continued demolishing homes as they expand their control over the city near the Egyptian border.
The Israeli military has seized about one-third of Gaza, displacing thousands while constructing surveillance towers and clearing ground it now refers to as "security zones."
Aid delivery remains suspended after Israel resumed its offensive in March, following the breakdown of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
The United Nations has warned that Gaza's 2.3 million residents face imminent famine under the ongoing blockade.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday of an 'intensive' phase of the military campaign, following security cabinet approval for operations that could include taking full control of Gaza and directly managing humanitarian aid.
Since Israel's initial attack in Gaza during October 2023 , over 52,000 Palestinians — the majority of them civilians — have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities.
The situation remains fluid, with Rafah potentially being eyed by Israel as a designated humanitarian zone — even as homes are razed and casualties mount.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Recorder
2 hours ago
- Business Recorder
US slams UN conference on Israel-Palestinian issue, warns of consequences
PARIS: U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is discouraging governments around the world from attending a U.N. conference next week on a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a U.S. cable seen by Reuters. The diplomatic demarche, sent on Tuesday, says countries that take 'anti-Israel actions' following the conference will be viewed as acting in opposition to U.S. foreign policy interests and could face diplomatic consequences from Washington. The demarche, which was not previously reported, runs squarely against the diplomacy of two close allies France and Saudi Arabia, who are co-hosting the gathering next week in New York that aims to lay out the parameters for a roadmap to a Palestinian state, while ensuring Israel's security. 'We are urging governments not to participate in the conference, which we view as counterproductive to ongoing, life-saving efforts to end the war in Gaza and free hostages,' read the cable. President Emmanuel Macron has suggested France could recognise a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territories at the conference. French officials say they have been working to avoid a clash with the U.S., Israel's staunchest major ally. UN conference on two-state solution to Mideast conflict set for June 'The United States opposes any steps that would unilaterally recognise a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,' the cable read. The United States for decades backed a two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians that would create a state for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza alongside Israel. Trump, in his first term, was relatively tepid in his approach to a two-state solution, a longtime pillar of U.S. Middle East policy. The Republican president has given little sign of where he stands on the issue in his second term. But on Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a long-time vocal supporter of Israel, said he did not think an independent Palestinian state remained a U.S. foreign policy goal. Gaza war 'Unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state would effectively render Oct. 7 Palestinian Independence Day,' the cable read, referring to when Palestinian Hamas carried out a cross-border attack from Gaza on Israel in 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Hamas' attack triggered Israel's air and ground war in Gaza in which almost 55,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of the 2.3 million population displaced and the enclave widely reduced to rubble. If Macron went ahead, France, home to Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities, would become the first Western heavyweight to recognise a Palestinian state. This could lend greater momentum to a movement hitherto dominated by smaller nations generally more critical of Israel. Macron's stance has shifted amid Israel's intensified Gaza offensive and escalating violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, and there is a growing sense of urgency in Paris to act now before the idea of a two-state solution vanishes forever. The U.S. cable said Washington had worked tirelessly with Egypt and Qatar to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, free the hostages and end the conflict. 'This conference undermines these delicate negotiations and emboldens Hamas at a time when the terrorist group has rejected proposals by the negotiators that Israel has accepted.' This week Britain and Canada, also G7 allies of the United States, were joined by other countries in placing sanctions on two Israeli far-right government ministers to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring the Gaza war to an end. 'The United States opposes the implied support of the conference for potential actions including boycotts and sanctions on Israel as well as other punitive measures,' the cable read. Israel has repeatedly criticised the conference, saying it rewards Hamas for the attack on Israel, and it has lobbied France against recognising a Palestinian state. 'Nothing surprises me anymore, but I don't see how many countries could step back on their participation,' said a European diplomat, who asked for anonymity due to the subject's sensitivity. 'This is bullying, and of a stupid type.' The U.S. State Department and the French Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Business Recorder
3 hours ago
- Business Recorder
Israeli strike kills one in Lebanon's south: ministry
BEIRUT: One person was killed on Wednesday in an Israeli strike on a village in southern Lebanon, the health ministry reported, the latest deadly attack despite a November ceasefire. 'The raid carried out by an enemy Israeli drone on the town of Beit Lif, in the Bint Jbeil district, resulted in one martyr and three people injured,' read a statement from the ministry. The official National News Agency said the strike targeted a house's courtyard in the town, adding that a missile hit the homeowner's car. Israeli gunfire, airstrikes kill 60 in Gaza, many near aid site, medics say Israel has regularly bombed its northern neighbour since the November ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities with group Hezbollah including two months of full-blown war. The agreement required Hezbollah fighters to withdraw north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the Israeli border, and dismantle all military infrastructure to its south. It also required Israel to withdraw all of its troops from Lebanon, but it has kept them in five positions it deems 'strategic'.
Business Recorder
9 hours ago
- Business Recorder
Trump says he's less confident about nuclear deal with Iran
WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump said he was less confident that Iran will agree to stop uranium enrichment in a nuclear deal with Washington, according to an interview released on Wednesday. 'I don't know,' Trump told the 'Pod Force One' podcast on Monday when asked if he thought he could get Iran to agree to shut down its nuclear program. 'I don't know. I did think so, and I'm getting more and more — less confident about it.' Trump has been seeking a new nuclear deal to place limits on Iran's disputed uranium enrichment activities and has threatened the Islamic Republic with bombing if no agreement is reached. He told reporters at the White House on Monday that he had discussed Iran with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday and said talks with Iranians were 'tough.' In the podcast interview, Trump said the Iranians seem to be using delaying tactics. 'I'm less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago. Something happened to them, but I am much less confident of a deal being made,' he said. Trump repeated that Washington would not allow Tehran to develop nuclear bombs - by enriching uranium to high levels of fissile purity - whether or not a deal is reached. Iran says new round of US talks planned for Sunday 'But it would be nicer to do it without warfare, without people dying, it's so much nicer to do it. But I don't think I see the same level of enthusiasm for them to make a deal.' Iran has long said it has no plans to develop nuclear weapon and is only interested in atomic power generation and other peaceful projects. Russia said on Wednesday it stood ready to remove highly enriched uranium from Iran and convert it into civilian reactor fuel as a potential way to narrow U.S.-Iranian differences. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees arms control and U.S. relations, told Russian media that efforts to reach a solution should be redoubled and that Moscow was willing to help in practical ways. 'We are ready to provide assistance to both Washington and Tehran, not only politically, not only in the form of ideas that could be of use in the negotiation process, but also practically: for example, through the export of excess nuclear material produced by Iran and its subsequent adaptation to the production of fuel for reactors,' Ryabkov said. He did not make clear whether the nuclear fuel would then be returned to Iran for use in its civil nuclear energy programme, which Moscow has helped develop. During his first White House term, Trump withdrew the U.S. from a 2015 deal between Iran and world powers that placed limits on Tehran's uranium enrichment drive in exchange for relief from international sanctions.
