Israeli strikes across Gaza kill 24, medics and officials say

At least 24 Palestinians have been killed in two separate Israeli air strikes overnight, including a strike on a school sheltering displaced families in central Gaza, according to medics and civil defence officials.

The strike targeted Fahmi Al-Jargawi School in Gaza City, which had been housing hundreds of displaced people who fled the northern town of Beit Lahia, currently under intense Israeli military assault.

A spokesperson for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said 20 bodies, including children, were recovered from the school – many of them severely burned – after fires engulfed two classrooms turned into living quarters.

The Israeli military has been contacted for comment.

“Flames were everywhere. I saw charred bodies lying on the ground,” said Rami Rafiq, a resident living across from the school, in a phone call with BBC. “My son fainted when he saw the horrific scene.”

Video footage shared online showed large fires consuming parts of the school, with graphic images of severely burned victims, including children, and survivors suffering critical injuries.

Local reports said among the dead was Mohammad Al-Kasih, the head of investigations for the Hamas police in northern Gaza, along with his wife and children.

Shortly before the school strike, another Israeli air strike hit a home in central Gaza City, killing four more people, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

The twin attacks are part of a broader Israeli offensive that has escalated in the northern part of the enclave over the past week.

On Friday, an Israeli strike on the home of a Palestinian doctor in Gaza killed nine of her 10 children. Dr Alaa al-Najjar’s 11-year-old son was injured, along with her husband, Hamdi al-Najjar, who is in critical condition.

The nine children – Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Gebran, Eve, Rival, Sayden, Luqman and Sidra – were aged between just a few months old and 12. The Israeli military has said the incident is under review.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross said two of its staff were killed in a strike on their home in Khan Younis on Saturday.

The killing of Ibrahim Eid, a weapon contamination officer, and Ahmad Abu Hilal, a security guard at the Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah “points to the intolerable civilian death toll in Gaza”, the ICRC said, repeating its call for a ceasefire.

On Sunday, the head of a controversial US and Israeli-approved organisation that sought to use private firms to deliver aid to Gaza resigned.

In a statement by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, executive director Jake Wood said it had become apparent that plans to set up distribution hubs would not meet the “humanitarian principles” of independence and neutrality.

Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on 2 March that lasted 11 weeks before it allowed limited aid to enter the territory in the face of warnings of famine and mounting international outrage.

Israeli military body Cogat said on Saturday morning that 388 trucks carrying aid had entered Gaza since Monday. The UN says much more aid – between 500 to 600 trucks a day – is needed.

Meanwhile, 20 countries and organisations met in Madrid on Sunday to discuss ending the war in Gaza. Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel if it did not stop its attacks.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 53,939 people, including at least 16,500 children, have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.