Deadly strikes pound Gaza; massacre toll 38,794

Israel kept up its air strikes on Gaza yesterday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ramp up the pressure on Hamas as hopes faded for a US-announced ceasefire plan.
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel of deliberately undermining negotiations for a truce and hostage release deal because it did not want to end the war.
The Israeli military said it had carried out 25 strikes in 24 hours.
Netanyahu insisted Tuesday that despite mounting pressure, there would be no let-up in Israel’s campaign.
“This is exactly the time to increase the pressure even more,” he said.
The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said 52 people, most of them women and children, had been killed in Israeli strikes over the previous 24 hours.
A total of 38,794 Palestinians have been killed and 89,364 have been injured in Israeli military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement yesterday.
The UN humanitarian office OCHA said multiple strikes across Gaza on Tuesday killed and wounded dozens.
The territory’s civil defence agency said 30 people had been killed in three strikes in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza – one on a UN-run school, another on a house and a third on a mosque.
In southern Gaza, two people were killed in Israeli bombardment of the Shakush area, northwest of Rafah, a medical source at Nasser Hospital said.
At least 90% of Gazans have been forced from their homes, many of them seeking refuge in UN-run schools. Seven of these schools have been hit by Israeli strikes since July 6.
Nearly 70 percent of UN-run schools across Gaza have been hit during more than nine months of fighting, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said.
Washington has been pushing for a truce deal between Israel and Hamas since President Joe Biden released details of what he said was an Israeli ceasefire roadmap on May 31.
But despite the efforts of Egyptian and Qatari mediators, indirect negotiations have made no headway.
In a telephone call with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan late Tuesday, the Hamas leader blamed Israel for the deadlock.
“We dealt positively with the proposals put to us by the mediators but the occupation is avoiding the required outcome and does not want to reach an agreement under which it ends its war,” Haniyeh said.
The war has devastated the coastal territory and left Gazans suffering shortages of food, medicines and basic goods.
At a press conference yesterday, the World Health Organisation’s representative in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Rik Peeperkorn, said that only 16 aid trucks had entered the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom border crossing during the last month, while dozens of trucks were still waiting to do so.
The main crossing point for aid, Rafah, which connects Gaza with Egypt, has been closed for months since Israel sent ground troops into the city.