Latest | Over 30 dead in Israeli overnight attacks in Gaza, including in a school being used as an emergency shelter

An Israeli attack on Gaza killed more than 30 people overnight when it hit a school converted into a UN agency shelter for Palestinian refugees. Israel claimed on Thursday that the school was being used as a Hamas compound, but offered no evidence.

Hospital records and an Associated Press reporter at the hospital recorded at least 33 deaths from the attack, including 14 children and nine women. Another attack on a house overnight killed six people. Both attacks occurred in Nuseirat, one of several refugee camps in Gaza. Israel’s military later said it was unaware of any civilian casualties from the attack on the school.

International pressure is growing to limit civilian bloodshed in the war between Israel and Hamas. Spain’s foreign minister announced on Thursday that the country would ask a United Nations court for permission to join the lawsuit brought by South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza. The administration of US President Joe Biden has launched an intensive campaign to persuade Hamas and Israel to agree to a new proposal for a ceasefire and the release of hostages that raises hopes of an end to the war.

According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, more than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, making no distinction between combatants and civilians.

The eight-month war in Gaza has largely disrupted the supply of food, medicine and other aid to Palestinians, and people are suffering from widespread hunger. According to UN agencies, over a million people in Gaza could experience peak levels of hunger by mid-July.

Israel began the war after the October 7 Hamas attack, in which militants entered southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and abducting about 250. About 80 of the hostages captured on October 7 are believed to still be alive in the Gaza Strip, as are the remains of 43 others.

At the moment:

– An Israeli attack kills at least 33 people in a school in the Gaza Strip that the military says is used by Hamas.

– Spain requests to join South Africa’s lawsuit before the UN court accusing Israel of genocide.

– A social media campaign to raise awareness of the troop buildup in Rafah.

— Israeli settlers in the West Bank have been subjected to international sanctions. This has only encouraged them.

– Yemen’s Houthi rebels unveil a solid-fuel “Palestine” missile similar to Iran’s hypersonic missile.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

Here is the latest information:

Israel’s representative resigns from International Court of Justice panel overseeing genocide case

JERUSALEM — Israel’s representative on the panel of judges hearing the genocide trial against Israel in the world’s highest court has resigned from his post for personal reasons, according to a letter he sent to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

Judge Aharon Barak, a former attorney general and peace negotiator who served as chief justice of Israel’s highest court from 1995 to 2006, wrote to Netanyahu on Tuesday that he had sent the president of the International Court of Justice a letter of resignation.

“I am resigning for personal and family reasons,” he wrote to Netanyahu. “Thank you for the trust you have placed in me.”

Barak was one of four judges on the court who said the ICJ’s ruling that Israel must halt its operations in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, did not mean that Israel must cease operations there altogether. He said Israel could continue to operate in Gaza but must avoid causing undue harm to Palestinian civilians and violating Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose office is largely ceremonial, thanked Barak for his service at the court in a statement published on X on Thursday, adding: “We will continue to stand firm against the evil, hypocrisy and false accusations made against the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces,” using an acronym for the Israeli military.

According to the military, a reserve soldier was killed in a recent drone attack in northern Israel

JERUSALEM – The Israeli military said Thursday that an Israeli reserve soldier was killed in a drone strike on a village in northern Israel the previous day.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said it launched an attack on a gathering of military officials in response to an earlier Israeli cross-border attack.

The Israeli military said two drones carrying explosives were fired toward Hurfeish, a village in northern Israel.

No air raid sirens sounded before the attack, and Israeli authorities said that in addition to the one soldier killed, more than 10 other people were injured in the attack. The military identified the fallen soldier as Staff Sergeant (Res.) Refael Kauders, 39.

With Kaunder’s death, 16 soldiers and ten civilians have been killed in northern Israel since October.

More than 400 people were killed in Lebanon, including more than 70 civilians and non-combatants.

Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire daily since the day after the October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza. The deadly fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border and raised fears of a larger regional war.

Israeli military says it is not aware of any civilian casualties in its attack on a school

JERUSALEM – The Israeli military said Thursday it had no knowledge of civilian casualties in the attack that killed at least 33 Palestinians, including 23 women and children, according to local officials and an AP reporter at the hospital where the bodies were received.

The attack occurred early Thursday at a United Nations school that houses displaced Palestinians in central Gaza. Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said intelligence indicated militants had used the school compound to orchestrate some of the Oct. 7 attacks and that at least 20 militants were currently using it as a “staging area” for attacks on Israeli soldiers.

“I am not aware of any civilian involvement. We will look at the data and intelligence that comes out in the next few hours or days,” Lerner told reporters.

He declined to say whether the military would investigate the attack, as it did in May, when dozens of people were killed in an Israeli strike near a tent camp for displaced people in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.

Spain requests to join the case of South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide

MADRID – Spain will ask a United Nations court for permission to join South Africa’s lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip, its foreign minister announced Thursday.

Spain is the first European country to take this step after South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice in late 2023, claiming that Israel is violating the Genocide Convention with its military attack that devastated large parts of Gaza.

Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Libya and the Palestinians have already applied to join the case, which is currently being heard before the court in The Hague, Netherlands.

The court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, but did not order a ceasefire for the enclave. Israel has failed to comply with that order.

Spain’s request to join the process is the latest step by the government of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to support peace efforts in the Gaza Strip.

Israel denies that its military operation to crush Hamas, which was triggered by the deadly October 7 attacks in southern Israel, is genocide.

In the surprise attacks, Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians, 36,000 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s air and ground strikes.

Israeli attack kills dozens of people in school-turned-shelter in Gaza

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip – An Israeli attack early Thursday on a school converted into a makeshift shelter in central Gaza that the military said was being used as a Hamas compound killed at least 30 people, including five children, according to local health officials.

The attack came after the military announced it would launch new air and ground operations in central Gaza, an apparent expansion of the nearly eight-month-long offensive that began after Hamas’s attack on October 7. An international medical aid organization had already reported rising casualty numbers before Thursday’s attack.

At least 30 bodies were found in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the attack on the school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), and another six in a separate attack on a residential building, according to hospital records and an Associated Press reporter at the hospital. Hamas-run television had previously reported a higher death toll.

The Israeli military claimed, without immediately providing evidence, that Hamas and Islamic Jihad used the school as a cover for their operations and that risk-reduction measures were taken before the attack.

The war began with the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, which killed at least 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. At least 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, and hundreds more have died in operations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels unveil new solid-fuel rocket

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen’s Houthi rebels have added a new solid-fuel rocket to their arsenal that bears similarities to one previously demonstrated by Iran that Tehran says flies at supersonic speeds.

The rebels fired their new “Palestine” missile, whose warhead is painted like a checkered Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, at the port of Eilat in Israel’s southern Gulf of Aqaba on Monday. The attack set off air raid sirens but caused no damage or injuries.

Footage released by the Houthis late Wednesday showed the Palestine being lifted on what appeared to be a mobile launcher and rising rapidly into the air, with plumes of white smoke rising from its engine. White smoke is common with solid-fuel rockets.

Solid-fuel rockets can be deployed and fired more quickly than liquid-fueled ones. This is a key concern for the Houthis, as their rocket launching sites have been repeatedly attacked by US and allied forces in recent months as the rebels attacked shipping in the Red Sea corridor. One such attack even hit the Houthis before they could fire their rocket.