‘Another school hit’: Gaza battles rage as mediators push for truce deal
Heavy battles rage in Gaza ahead of truce talks, with protesters demanding a hostage release deal and Benjamin Netanyahu accused of ‘inappropriate conduct’. Warning: Graphic
World
Don't miss out on the headlines from World. Followed categories will be added to My News.
A senior Hamas official has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of stepping up combat and bombardment in Gaza in order to derail the latest truce effort.
“Whenever a round of negotiations begins and a breakthrough is within reach, he disrupts it all and escalates the aggression and massacres against civilians,” the Hamas official said, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
It comes as Israeli media reports that security officials were left “shocked” by Netanyahu’s public intervention into ceasefire negotiations on Sunday.
Two unnamed officials told said “Negotiations should be conducted inside the room, not in announcements to the media. And certainly not just before the start of a meeting that determines the continuation of the negotiations,” according to The Guardian.
Hebrew outlet Ynet reported that a security source described Netanyahu’s actions as “inappropriate conduct that will harm the chance of returning the abductees home.”
Netanyahu’s office issued a document entitled Principles for a Hostage Release Deal demanding that “any deal enable Israel to resume its offensive operations until it achieves its war goals”, to “prevent Hamas from smuggling arms from Egypt”, and to prevent “thousands of terrorists from returning to northern Gaza”.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid criticised Netanyahu’s statement, posting to social media to say “We are at a critical moment in the negotiations, the lives of the abductees depend on it, why issue such provocative messages? How does it contribute to the process?”
But Netanyahu is under increasing pressure from the right to continue the war, with fears that the government will collapse if he agrees to a ceasefire.
Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said he will not be part of any deal with Hamas, threatening a split in the government.
Speaking at a meeting of the Religious Zionist party, Smotrich said: “We will not be part of a deal to surrender to Hamas. This deal is a defeat and humiliation for Israel and a victory for [Yahya] Sinwar. It will sentence to death 90 abductees who are not part of the deal and will result in thousands of murdered people who will die in the next massacre.”
Smotrich posted to social media to say: “This is the time to squeeze the neck until we crush and break the enemy. To stop now, just before the end, and let them recover to fight us again is a senseless folly that will take the achievements of the war bought with much blood down the drain. We must continue until victory.
Smotrich has said it is his “life’s mission” to prevent a Palestinian state being formed, and wishes to annex the occupied West Bank permanently to Israel.
Meanwhile , Israeli troops and tanks are engaged in heavy clashes with Palestinian militants in Gaza City as fighter jets and drones cross the skies over the besieged territory. Thousands of civilians were on the move again in northern Gaza, while clashes rocked the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah in the conflict sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Israel’s military has issued a further evacuation warning, ordering civilians in the south-west of Gaza City to flee to Deir al-Balah.
The October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.
Israel’s military offensive has killed at least 38,193 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry there.
FOLLOW UPATES BELOW:
‘ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER SCHOOL HIT’
A second Israeli strike in two days on a school sheltering displaced families killed at least four people, as the UN condemned the targeting of its shelters.
Israel’s military said it hit “the area of the school” in Gaza City, adding the school complex was used as a militant hideout and housed “a Hamas weapons manufacturing facility.
The civil defence agency in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Ihab al-Ghusain, the group’s deputy labour minister, was among those killed in the strike Sunday on the Holy Family School.
“Another day. Another month. Another school hit,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, posted on social media platform X on Sunday.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which owns the school, said hundreds of civilians had taken shelter there since the start of the war.
Gaza authorities said at least 16 people were killed and 75 injured in an Israeli strike on a UN-run school on Saturday.
Israel said that was also aimed at militants hiding among displaced at the Al-Jawni school.
The Israeli army accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding in schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, a charge the group denies.
Tens of thousands of Gaza residents have sought shelter in UN-run schools across the territory and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has expressed outrage at the repeat attacks on its facilities.
UNRWA spokesperson Juliette Touma told AFP that more than half, or 190, of UNRWA’s facilities have been hit - “some more than once” - in the military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks.
At least 196 UNRWA workers have been killed, including two on Saturday.
“When the war started we closed the schools and they became shelters,” Touma said.
There have been 450 “incidents” involving UNRWA buildings during the war and Touma called damage to UN-protected facilities in the Gaza conflict “unprecedented in the history of the UN.”
“Any hits on UN facilities are shocking and there has been a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law in regard to this conflict,” said the spokesperson.
Hamas called the attack on Al-Jawni school in central Gaza, an “odious massacre”.
The Israel military said it targeted “a hideout and operational infrastructure from which attacks” on its troops were carried out.
MOROCCANS IN PRO-PALESTINIAN MARCH
Thousands of Moroccans demonstrated Sunday in the northern city of Tangier in support of the Palestinian people and against Morocco’s ties with Israel, an AFP journalist saw.
“Gaza is not alone,” chanted the protesters during the event which saw the grouping of leftist parties and Islamist movements.
The protesters took to the streets of the coastal city after reports last month of an Israeli ship’s docking in Tangier port.
Coming from the United States, the ship made a pit stop in Tangier on June 19, according to Israeli media.
Moroccan authorities have yet to confirm the reports.
Several demonstrations have taken place in the North African country since the Gaza war broke out in October.
Rabat has officially denounced what it said were “flagrant violations of the provisions of international law” by Israel in its war against Hamas.
But it has not given any indication that normalisation with Israel would be undone.
HAMAS READY TO DISCUSS HOSTAGE RELEASE WITHOUT ‘COMPLETE’ CEASEFIRE
A Hamas official said Sunday the Palestinian Islamist group was ready to discuss a hostage release deal with Israel even without a “complete” ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The apparent easing of Hamas’s position comes as long-stalled diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage release have gathered pace with a new proposal and meetings hosted by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
“Hamas had previously required that Israel agree to a complete and permanent ceasefire,” the top official told AFP as the war entered its 10th month.
But mediators have offered assurances “that as long as the... negotiations continued, the ceasefire would continue”, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Israel, which vowed to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s October 7 attack that sparked the war, has repeatedly rejected demands for a permanent ceasefire.
FIGHTING RAGES AS WAR ENTERS 10TH MONTH
Israel has carried out more deadly air strikes in the Gaza Strip as the war entered its 10th month, with fighting raging across the Palestinian territory and fresh diplomatic efforts underway to halt the violence.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement fired another 20 rockets at northern Israel, leaving one person injured there, the latest cross-border attacks launched in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The fighting and bombardment in besieged Gaza raged on unabated on Sunday, with medics and emergency services in the Hamas-run territory reporting yet more deaths in several strikes.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the bodies of six people including two children were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
And paramedics said six people were killed in one strike on a house in Gaza City and three in another elsewhere in Gaza’s largest urban area.
An AFP correspondent said Israeli drones were firing in Gaza City’s Shujaiya district, which has been largely evacuated and rocked by intense battles for two weeks.
The Israeli army said that in Shujaiya, its “troops eliminated several terrorists, dismantled terror infrastructure sites and located numerous weapons, including explosive devices, AK-47 rifles, machine guns and pistols”.
It also said 30 “terrorists” had been killed in far-southern Rafah over the past day and that Israeli forces had carried out an operation in nearby Khan Yunis where Hamas had taken up position in a municipality building.
Earlier, the Gaza health ministry said 16 people were killed in a strike on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA that was sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, in central Gaza.
The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the Al-Jawni school.
On Sunday, air raid sirens again sounded across northern Israel and the army reported that 20 rockets were fired by Iran-backed Hezbollah, some of which were intercepted by air defence systems.
One person was wounded by shrapnel in Kfar Zeitim near Tiberias, around 30 kilometres inside Israel, local police said, adding they were in stable condition.
Hezbollah said that “in response to the attack and assassination that the Israeli enemy carried out”, it had targeted “one of the main bases” in northern Israel, west of Tiberias, with “dozens of Katyusha rockets”.
CATASTROPHIC HUNGER
The war has uprooted 90 per cent of Gaza’s population, left almost 500,000 people enduring “catastrophic” hunger and shuttered most hospitals, UN agencies say.
“The situation is very difficult,” said Dr Muhammad Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia.
“There is no fuel in the hospital to work. We only operate the small generator for two hours a day and we have postponed many scheduled operations due to the lack of fuel.”
PROTESTS CONTINUE WITH ‘NATIONWIDE DISRUPTION DAY’
Israeli protesters blocked roads in Tel Aviv for a second day on Sunday, local time, demanding the government secure a hostage deal with Hamas as the Gaza war enters a 10th month.
A nationwide “disruption day” began at 6:29am, symbolically corresponding to the start of the Hamas October 7 attacks on southern Israel that set off the conflict.
Flag-wielding demonstrators stopped traffic at an intersection in Tel Aviv, calling for elections and for the government to do more to free remaining captives in Gaza.
Police stepped up security around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence.
Anti-government demonstrators blocking a highway clashed with police on horseback before authorities deployed water canon to clear the road.
Sachar Mor, a relative of hostage Ofer Kaderon, told a Saturday rally. “For the first time, we all feel that we are closer than ever to getting our loved ones back. This is an opportunity that cannot be missed.”
More Coverage
Originally published as ‘Another school hit’: Gaza battles rage as mediators push for truce deal
Join the conversation
‘Little angel’: Parent of Swift dance class child breaks silence
A parent of one of the children who attended the Taylor Swift-themed dance class has shared a heartfelt tribute to the victims and revealed the “truth” about what happened with police on the day of the attack.
Read more
’Full-scale war’ warning, chief assassinated
The head of Hamas has been assassinated — leading to warnings we are on the brink of a “full-scale war”.
Read more
‘Wiped out Trump’s lead’: Polls show Harris ahead
New polling has shown where Kamala Harris has picked up key votes after she attacked Donald Trump, declaring “the momentum in this race is shifting” and the Republican candidate was “feeling it”.
Read more
Israel assassinates key Hamas leader
Israel has killed a top Hamas leader in a blow to the terror group likened to the killings of Bin Laden and IS chief Al-Baghdadi. Follow updates.
Read more
Horror scenes as UK city on fire in riots
Violent protests have erupted amid speculation about the identity of a teen suspected of killing three children in a knife rampage in England.
Read more
State whacked by ‘alarming’ virus surge
One Aussie state has been whacked by a sudden and “alarming” surge in virus cases that are surpassing Covid-19 hospitalisations.
Read more