Israel strike on UN school in Gaza kills at least 37, almost half children

By AFP

A Gaza hospital said at least 37 people, including 14 children, were killed in an Israeli strike Thursday on a UN-run school that the Israeli military alleged housed a "Hamas compound".

The massacre came after US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators resumed talks aimed at securing a truce and hostage-prisoner swap in the nearly eight-month war triggered by Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.

The military said it had "eliminated" several militants in a "precise strike on a Hamas compound embedded inside an UNRWA school" just before 2:00 am in the Nuseirat area of central Gaza.

Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said later nine "terrorists" were killed when fighter jets attacked three classrooms where about 30 militants from Islamic Jihad and Hamas were hiding.

The United States called on Israel to be "fully" transparent about the strike.

"The government of Israel has said that they are going to release more information about this strike, including the names of those who died in it. We expect them to be fully transparent in making that information public," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

UN chief Antonio Guterres called the strike "just another horrific example of the price that civilians are paying".

"There will need to be accountability for everything that has happened in Gaza," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for the strike to be "independently investigated".

Israel accuses Hamas and its allies in Gaza of using schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure including facilities run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, as operational centres -- charges the militants deny.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, near Nuseirat, said it had received the bodies of at least "37 martyrs" from the strike.

Faisal Thari, a displaced Gazan who had sought refuge at the school, told AFP: "Why? What have we done for them to bomb us?"

Hamas in a statement decried a "new crime... against our people".

A medic said another Israeli pre-dawn strike killed six people in a house in Nuseirat refugee camp, and witnesses reported intense shelling in the Bureij and Al-Maghazi camps in the same area.

Israeli warplanes also carried out strikes in parts of Rafah, a source in Gaza's southernmost city told AFP.

Spain joins ICJ case

The military said a soldier was killed in Gaza on Thursday, bringing to 295 the overall death toll since its ground offensive in the Palestinian territory began on October 27.

The war was sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, 120 of whom remain in Gaza, including 41 the army says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 36,654 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

Israel has faced growing diplomatic isolation, with international court cases accusing it of war crimes and several European countries recognising a Palestinian state.

Spain, which last week sparked Israeli fury by formally recognising Palestinian statehood, said Thursday it would become the latest country to join South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of "genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza.

Peace push

US President Joe Biden last week outlined what he called a three-phase Israeli plan to halt the fighting for six weeks while hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and the delivery of aid into Gaza is stepped up.

G7 powers and Arab states have backed the proposal, and on Wednesday 16 world leaders signed alongside Biden calling for Hamas to accept the deal.

"There is no time to lose. We call on Hamas to close this agreement," said the statement issued by the White House.

However, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan on Thursday called the proposal "just words said by Biden in a speech".

"So far, the Americans have not presented anything documented or written that commits them" to what Biden said, Hamdan said.

Major sticking points include Hamas insisting on a permanent truce and full Israeli withdrawal -- demands Israel has rejected.

Egypt's state-linked Al-Qahera news quoted a high-level source Thursday saying that Cairo had "received positive signs from the Palestinian movement signalling its aspiration for a ceasefire".

The unnamed source said Hamas's response was expected in the coming days, and Miller said Washington hoped for a Hamas response "as soon as possible".

Meanwhile, the White House's Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk met Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Cairo and discussed the talks.

Lebanon 'escalation'

The war has sent regional tensions soaring, with violence on the rise involving Israel and its allies on the one hand, and Iran-backed armed groups on the other.

Regular cross-border clashes between Israeli forces and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, which have forced mass evacuations on both sides, have intensified.

The Israeli military on Thursday announced a soldier was killed in a Hezbollah drone strike the day before on Hurfeish.

Israeli politicians have threatened more intense fighting against Hezbollah, which last fought a major war with Israel in 2006.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, a day after saying Israel was "prepared for a very intense operation" along the border with Lebanon.

"The state of Israel is in a difficult campaign on many fronts," he said at a military command centre.

"This effort is being carried out amid complicated international pressure on us."

The US State Department's Miller has said any "escalation" in Lebanon would "greatly harm Israel's overall security".