GAZA: At least 12 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school on Tuesday that was hosting displaced families in the west of Gaza City, the enclave’s civil defence authorities said.
The Israeli military claimed it struck a Hamas base embedded inside the school, however, Hamas strongly rejected Israeli allegations that it uses schools and hospitals for military purposes.
Gaza officials said many are still missing under the rubble of Mustafa Hafez school’s building with rescuers unable to reach them because of a lack of equipment.
The Israeli military on Tuesday claimed to recover the bodies of six Israelis who were taken by Hamas in the October 7 attack. The military in a statement said the bodies were recovered in an overnight raid in southern Gaza.
It didn’t mention how the hostages were killed. But Hamas on several occasions has said that some of the hostages have been killed in Israel’s relentless bombing.
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has warned US Secretary of State Antony Blinken of the risk of the war in Gaza expanding regionally in a way “difficult to imagine”.
“The ceasefire in Gaza must be the beginning of broader international recognition of the Palestinian state and the implementation of the two-state solution, as this is the basic guarantor of stability in the region,” he added as the two met in El Alamein.
He said the time has come to end the ongoing war, and to resort to wisdom.
Israel’s war on Gaza, now in its 319th day, has killed at least 40,173 Palestinians mostly women and children and injured over 92,857 others, with more than 10,000 estimated to be buried under ruble of bombed homes.
