Mediators meet today to negotiate the release of hostages and prisoners, as well as the cessation of hostilities
▲ The number of Palestinians killed is rising every day. This image is from a hospital in Deir al-Balah.Photo Ap
Holly Evans
The Independent
The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, July 28, 2024, p. 20
Tel Aviv, Gaza, Israel’s Health Ministry said at least 30 people were killed in airstrikes on a school in Gaza where dozens of displaced people were sheltering.
Bombs hit a girls’ school in Deir al-Balah, killing eight women and 15 children, while 100 wounded were taken to Al-Aqsa hospital. For hours, people searched for more victims in the rubble.
The Israeli army said it had bombed a command and control centre used to store weapons and plan attacks. In a statement, it added that it had warned civilians before launching the hail of explosives.
Photographs from the carnage show ruined classrooms, where civilians and emergency workers gather the remains of victims.
Um Hasan Ali, a displaced woman living at the school, said she had only been back in Gaza from Egypt with her daughter for medical treatment for just a couple of months, and now the girl was injured in the attack and taken to hospital.
The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 11 people were killed in other attacks yesterday in different parts of the besieged enclave.
On Saturday morning, the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of part of a humanitarian zone in Gaza in anticipation of a planned offensive in Khan Yunis, after Tel Aviv said it detected rocket fire that Tel Aviv said originated in that area.
The army warned it was planning an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to take shelter during the war.
It was the second evacuation order issued in a week for the humanitarian zone, which lacks drainage and medical and relief facilities. Israel expanded the zone last May to concentrate people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population had gathered.
According to Tel Aviv estimates, around 1.8 million Palestinians are sheltering there, having been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punitive campaign on land and in the air. Last November, the military said the area could be attacked and that It is not a safe area, but it is safer than any other. in Gaza.
Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven people in overnight Israeli raids in Zawaida in the centre of the strip.
Members of two families – parents and their two children, and a mother and her two children – lay wrapped in traditional Islamic white shrouds, as members of the community gathered to perform funeral rites. Men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, and grieving friends and neighbours approached one by one to say their final farewells to the deceased.
Officials from the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy on Sunday to discuss the 115 hostages still held by Hamas and a possible ceasefire.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns is expected to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad Director David Barnea and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, according to U.S. and Egyptian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
© The Independent
Translation: Jorge Anaya
