Gaza hospital reports 37 dead in attack on UN school allegedly used by Hamas

A hospital in central Gaza said on Thursday that at least 37 people were killed in an overnight Israeli bombing of a UN-run school that the Israeli military said was a “Hamas compound.”

The deadly attack came as U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators resumed talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire and hostage release in the nearly eight-month war sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The military said it had “eliminated” several militants in a “precise attack on a Hamas compound in a UNRWA school in the Nuseirat area” in the central Gaza Strip.

Israel accuses Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip of using schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, including facilities of UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, as centers of operations – the militants deny these allegations.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah, near Nuseirat, said it had received the bodies of at least “37 martyrs” from the attack, updating the original death toll of 27 from the Hamas government media office, which had condemned the attack as a “horrific massacre… that shames humanity.”

An AFP photographer saw Palestinians removing blood-stained mattresses and assessing the damage to the school where displaced Gazans had sought shelter. Parts of the school are now littered with broken concrete slabs.

A medic at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital said another Israeli attack at dawn killed six people in a house in Nuseirat refugee camp, while witnesses reported heavy artillery shelling in Bureij and Al-Maghazi camps in the same area.

A local source told AFP that Israeli warplanes also carried out attacks on eastern and central districts of Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.

The war was triggered by the Hamas attack on October 7, in which 1,194 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to a count by the AFP news agency based on official Israeli figures.

The militants also took 251 hostages, 120 of whom are still in the Gaza Strip. According to the army, 41 of them are dead.

According to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled area, at least 36,586 people in the Gaza Strip were killed as a result of Israel’s subsequent bombings and ground offensives, again mostly civilians.

– Adhesive dots –

As fighting rages on, entering its ninth month on Friday, Israel faces increasing diplomatic isolation, with international courts accusing it of war crimes and several European countries recognizing a Palestinian state.

US President Joe Biden last week outlined a three-phase Israeli plan that calls for a six-week cessation of fighting while exchanging hostages held by militants in the Gaza Strip for Palestinian prisoners and increasing aid.

The G7 powers and the Arab states support the proposal, although there are still significant sticking points: Hamas insists on a permanent ceasefire and a complete Israeli withdrawal – demands that Israel flatly rejects.

A source familiar with the negotiations confirmed to AFP that a meeting “between the Qatari prime minister and the head of Egyptian intelligence with Hamas took place on Wednesday in the Qatari capital Doha to discuss an agreement on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the exchange of hostages and prisoners.”

Biden urged Hamas to accept the agreement and dispatched CIA chief Bill Burns to Qatar, where the group’s political office is based, to make a renewed push after months of stalled negotiations.

The source said Burns would “continue to work with mediators to reach an agreement between Hamas and Israel on a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the hostages.”

A senior Hamas official in Beirut accused Israel of seeking “endless” negotiations, while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the Islamist movement would “seriously and positively consider” any offer that met its core demands.

Muhammad al-Najjar, a 35-year-old man from northern Gaza who has been displaced twice by the war, told AFP he was “exhausted” by the war, which had “destroyed us and destroyed everything in our lives”.

“We just want to… end the catastrophic situation we are living in.”

– Lebanon: “Escalation” –

The bloodiest war in Gaza’s history has led to an escalation of tensions in the region, with violence increasing, involving Israel and its allies on one side and Iranian-backed armed groups on the other.

Regular cross-border clashes between Israeli forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, which have led to mass evacuations on both sides, have intensified in recent days, causing further deaths and sparking forest fires.

The Israeli military announced the latest death on Thursday: a soldier was killed the previous day in “fighting in the north,” where two explosive drones from Lebanon hit the town of Hurfeish.

According to the army, he is one of at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians killed on the Israeli side of the border since clashes began in early October.

In Lebanon, at least 455 people were killed in the violence, most of them fighters, but also 88 civilians, according to an AFP count.

Israeli politicians have threatened even fiercer fighting against Hezbollah, which last waged a major war against Israel in 2006.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel was prepared “for a very intensive operation” along the border with Lebanon and would “restore security in the north in one way or another.”

The United States appeared to warn Israel against taking action, with the State Department saying any “escalation” would endanger Israel’s security.

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