An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced persons in Gaza City killed at least 15 Palestinians yesterday, hours after two strikes in the occupied West Bank killed nine, Palestinian resistance movement Hamas said.
The Israeli military said the first of two West Bank airstrikes hit a vehicle in a town near the city of Tulkarm.
A Hamas statement said one of those killed was a commander of its Tulkarm brigades, while its ally Islamic Jihad claimed the other four men who died in the strike as its fighters.
Hours later, a second airstrike in the area targeted another group in Tulkarm, Israel’s military said.
Palestinian news agency WAFA said four people had died in that strike, and Hamas said all nine of those killed in the two Israeli attacks in the West Bank were fighters.
Violence in the West Bank was on the rise before the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and has risen since, with frequent Israeli raids in the territory, which is among those that the Palestinians seek for a state.
In the Gaza Strip, at least 15 people were killed in the Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced persons in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, the Hamas run-government media office said.
Hamas has denied Israeli accusations that it operates from civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals.
Earlier yesterday, Israeli strikes in the enclave killed six people in a house in the southern area of Rafah and two others in Gaza City, Gaza health officials said.
At least 39,550 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials.
A high-level Israeli delegation made a brief visit to Cairo yesterday in an attempt to resume Gaza ceasefire negotiations, Egyptian airport authority sources said. The delegation returned to Israel hours later, Israeli media said.
Chances of a breakthrough appear low as regional tension has soared following the assassination of Hamas’ leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday, a day after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a top military commander from Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran.
Haniyeh’s death was one in a series of killings of senior Hamas figures as the Gaza war nears its 11th month.
