Gaza rescuers say 52 killed in Israeli strikes, including 33 in school

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Gaza City, Palestinian Territories | AFP

Rescuers said devastating Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 52 people on Monday, 33 of them in a school turned shelter.

The civil defence agency said many of the casualties at the school in Gaza City were children, while the Israeli military said the site was housing "key terrorists".

Israel has stepped up a renewed offensive to destroy Hamas, drawing international condemnation as aid trickles in following a nearly three-month blockade that has sparked severe food and medical shortages.

World leaders meeting in Spain called for an end to the "inhumane" and "senseless" war, while aid groups said the trickle of aid is not nearly enough to staunch the hunger and health crises.

In Gaza City, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an early-morning Israeli strike on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi school, where displaced people were sheltering, killed "at least 33, with dozens of injured, mostly children, including several women".

The Israeli military said it had "struck key terrorists who were operating within a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre embedded in an area that previously served as the 'Faami Aljerjawi' School", adding that "numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians".

Throughout the war sparked by Hamas's unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack, Israel has accused the Palestinian militant organisation and its allies of using civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals as command centres, claims the groups have denied.

Jerusalem Day

Another strike killed at least 19 people "after the warplanes targeted the Abd Rabbo family's home early this morning in the town of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip", Bassal said.

Israel has expanded its Gaza offensive, activating tens of thousands of reservists as it aims for the defeat of Hamas.

The military said Monday that over "the past 48 hours, the (air force) struck over 200 targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including terrorists, weapon storage facilities, sniper and anti-tank missile posts, tunnel shafts, and additional terrorist infrastructure sites".

It also said it had detected three projectiles launched from Gaza toward communities in Israel Monday, as the country prepared to celebrate Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking its capture of the city's eastern sector in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

"Two projectiles fell in the Gaza Strip and one additional projectile was intercepted by the (air force) prior to crossing into Israeli territory," it said.

US President Donald Trump, whose administration has strongly backed Israel in its campaign, said Sunday he wanted to "see if we can stop that whole situation as quickly as possible".

The same day, as Arab and European nations gathered to seek an end to the conflict, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel.

He also called for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza "massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel", describing the territory as humanity's "open wound".

'Hunger, desperation'

Israel last week partially eased an aid blockade on Gaza that had exacerbated widespread shortages of food and medicine.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that coordinates civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that "107 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid... were transferred" into Gaza on Sunday.

But critics charge that is nowhere near enough, and just a fraction of the aid that was shipped in during a two-month ceasefire.

After some of its aid trucks were looted last week, the World Food Programme called on Israel "to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster", saying: "Hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity."

Meanwhile, Jake Wood, the head of a controversial US-backed group preparing to move aid into Gaza, announced his resignation, saying it was impossible to do his job in line with principles of neutrality and independence.

The GHF has vowed to distribute about 300 million meals in its first 90 days of operation, and said in a statement it would begin "direct aid delivery" on Monday.

The UN and international aid agencies have said they will not cooperate with the group, amid accusations it is working with Israel while lacking any Palestinian involvement.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday that at least 3,785 people had been killed in the territory since a ceasefire collapsed on March 18, taking the war's overall toll to 53,939, mostly civilians.

Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.