KHAN YUNIS – Israeli airstrikes hit a school used by displaced Palestinians in central Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 30 people including several children, as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators about a proposed cease-fire.
Seven children and seven women were among the dead taken from the girls' school in Deir al-Balah to Al Aqsa Hospital. Israel's military said it targeted a Hamas command center used to direct attacks against Israeli troops and store "large quantities of weapons.” Hamas called the military’s claim false.
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Civil defense workers in Gaza said thousands had been sheltering in the school, which also contained a medical site. Associated Press journalists saw a dead toddler in an ambulance and bodies covered with blankets. Shattered walls gaped and classrooms were in ruins. People searched the rubble strewn with pillows and other signs of habitation.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 12 people were killed in other strikes on Saturday.
Officials from the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy on Sunday to discuss cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
U.S. officials on Friday said Israel and Hamas agree on the basic framework of the three-phase deal. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech to the U.S. Congress vowed to press ahead with the war until “total victory.”
After the Israeli strike on the school, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said Netanyahu's reception from supporters in the U.S. constituted a “green light” to continue Israel's offensive.
A deadly new exchange of fire between Israel's military and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon renewed concerns about the war in Gaza inspiring a wider regional conflict.
New evacuation order for part of humanitarian zone
Israel's military on Saturday ordered a new evacuation of part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis in the south. The order was in response to rocket fire that Israel said came from the area.
The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants, including in parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in a zone where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge. It’s the second evacuation order issued in a week.
The 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) zone is blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid. Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing the southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time had crowded.
“This is my ninth or eighth displacement,” said Mohammad Jaber, who was originally displaced from Rafah. “Every time they tell us to go to an area, and it is unsafe. This time, we do not know where to go.” He wiped the sweat from his face as children piled neat bundles of belongings on the sand, ready for transport by vehicle or donkey cart.
Gaza Health Ministry officials said the evacuation orders had forced at least three health centers to stop providing care.
Israel estimates that about 1.8 million Palestinians shelter in the zone. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was difficult to know how many people would be affected by the latest order. “These are forced displacement orders," said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications, adding that Palestinians have "very little time to move.”
Farther north, Palestinians mourned seven people killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida in central Gaza. Parents and their two children and a mother and her two children were wrapped in white burial shrouds as friends and neighbors wept. Al Aqsa Hospital confirmed the count and AP journalists saw the bodies.
Two deaths in the West Bank
In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 17-year-old and 24-year-old were killed and 22 other people wounded after an Israeli drone strike in Balata camp in Nablus.
The Israeli military said an aircraft attacked from the air as part of its activity in Nablus. It said “terrorists” had fired at a military position and a soldier was lightly wounded.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,200 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The U.N. estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.
The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
On Saturday night, Israelis again held an anti-government demonstration in Tel Aviv demanding a cease-fire deal and the return of remaining hostages. “There’s a deal on the table and we need to make it happen, and we need to make it happen now,” said one protester, Tamir Guytsabary.
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Metz reported from Rabat, Morocco. Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.
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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war