At least 27 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza, marking another grim day as the war on the besieged territory enters its 10th month.
One of the attacks since dawn on Sunday targeted a school sheltering displaced people west of Gaza city, killing at least four Palestinians.
In central Gaza, the Israeli army struck a residential building in the al-Zawayda area, killing six people. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said the dead included two children.
The killings came a day after the targeting of a United Nations-run school for displaced Palestinians, in which at least 16 people were killed and dozens wounded.
Paramedics said six other Palestinians were killed in a strike on another house in Gaza City. Israeli jets also targeted a group of civilians on the city’s Street 8 in the Sabra neighbourhood, killing at least two people, according to the Wafa news agency.
The Israeli military said it attacked a Khan Younis municipality building in southern Gaza overnight, claiming it was used by Hamas for “military activity”.
There were no immediate details on the casualties in the Khan Younis attack. Hamas denies allegations that its fighters seek shelter in civilian areas, including schools and hospitals.
Meanwhile, the total death toll from the Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7 has reached 38,153, the territory’s health ministry said on Sunday.
The war has uprooted 90 percent of Gaza’s population, left almost 500,000 people enduring “catastrophic” hunger and shuttered most hospitals, United Nations agencies say.
The increasing casualties have overwhelmed Gaza’s largest remaining health facility, the Al-Aqsa Hospital, which is already filled with the wounded from the relentless Israeli strikes.
“The situation is very difficult,” said Dr Muhammad Salha, acting director of Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia.
Fresh diplomatic efforts
The barrage of deadly strikes came amid fresh diplomatic efforts by mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt to halt the nine months of violence.
Egypt’s Al Qahera News reported that Cairo was “hosting Israeli and American delegations to discuss the outstanding points” for a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, citing an unnamed high-level official source.
Mediators were in contact with Hamas amid “intensive Egyptian meetings this week with all parties to push efforts” for a truce, said the news report late on Saturday, without giving further details.
Israel also said it would send a delegation in the coming days for talks with Qatari mediators, even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman on Friday said “gaps” remained with Hamas on the ceasefire negotiations.
In May, United States President Joe Biden had announced a plan that included an initial six-week truce and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Talks subsequently stalled, but a US official on Thursday said a new proposal from Hamas “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal”.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP news agency that the group’s new ideas had been “conveyed by the mediators to the American side, which welcomed them and passed them on to the Israeli side”, adding that “now the ball is in the Israeli court”.
Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group have also exchanged almost daily cross-border fire since October last year, with the attacks and rhetoric escalating over the past month, sparking fears of a full-scale war.
Early on Sunday, air raid sirens again sounded across northern Israel and its army reported that 20 rockets were fired, some of them intercepted by air defence systems.
Meanwhile, protesters returned to the streets across Israel on Sunday to pressure the Netanyahu government to reach an accord to bring back hostages still being held in Gaza.
The protesters blocked rush-hour traffic at major intersections across the country, picketed politicians’ houses and briefly set fire to tyres on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway before police cleared the way.
