Israel’s military has told all Palestinians to evacuate Gaza City as it presses ahead with a fresh offensive across the strip.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) dropped leaflets on the central city calling on residents and displaced persons to head south, away from the renewed fighting in and around Gaza City which will remain a “dangerous combat zone”.
In a tweet in Arabic from the IDF spokesman, residents were told to find a “safe route” to evacuate.
Thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee under heavy bombardment over the past two days.
The IDF said it had now completed a two-week-long raid in Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighbourhood, during which time they claimed to destroyed eight Hamas tunnels and over 150 gunmen. A spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency, Mahmud Bassal, said the area had become a “ghost city” after widespread “destruction”.
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The mass evacuation comes after an Israeli strike on a school building in southern Gaza killed at least 29 people and injured dozens more, including those who had taken shelter there.
The Israeli military said it had targeted a terrorist from Hamas’s military wing who was involved in the October 7 massacre on civilians in southern Israel, and that it was “looking into the reports that civilians were harmed”.
The strike took place in front of the al-Awda school in in the town of Abassan, east of Khan Yunis, where witnesses say displaced people were sheltering both inside the building and in tents around it. The Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza said most of the people killed were women and children, and that the death toll was expected to rise.
“Children were in front of the entrance to the school door, my child being one of them — they were selling some simple things on the stalls. Suddenly they threw a missile at them,” said Umm Muhammad, whose son is now in urgent need of intensive care. She says there was no empty bed to treat him. “He was trying to buy some food to satisfy his hunger.”
Others had visited the school on Wednesday in search of an internet connection.
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Muhammad Abu Abed, 33, was at the school to search for internet to talk to his fiancée, currently in Egypt receiving medical treatment after surviving a bombing earlier in the war. He was killed in the strike.
“Usually he does not go to the al-Awda school area, but there was an internet connection,” said his sister Ghaida, 27. “He wanted to go and make a call over the internet with his fiancée. It was only a few moments before we heard heavy bombing. My mother called him and she felt that something had happened. ‘His phone is ringing , so he is fine.’ But unfortunately this hope has now been dashed.”
Josep Borrell, the vice-president of the European Commission, responded to the strike on social media, condemning “any violation of international law” and calling for those responsible to be held to account.
“It is imperative to immediately reach a ceasefire to bring respite to hundreds of stranded civilians, free all the hostages, deliver the needed humanitarian aid,” Borrell wrote on Twitter/X.
Israel said the incident was under review, but that it used “precise munition” to strike the Hamas operative.
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A video shared by Al-Jazeera claimed to show the moment of the strike. The footage shows children playing football in the school’s courtyard when a loud explosion is heard nearby, sending people running for cover.
“I cannot describe what happened to me,” Ahmed Qudayh, 14, told The Times.
“I was standing in front of al-Awda school and then I found myself lying on the ground, and I could not move. We heard the sound of an explosion that shook the place. Martyrs, body parts, and wounded were everywhere. Dust and shrapnel. We could no longer see from the smoke. Everyone was looking for someone who belonged to him.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said that four schools had been hit in the past four days.
Further strikes by Israel on Wednesday killed another 20 Palestinians in central Gaza, including six children and three women, some of them inside a purported “safe zone” declared by the Israeli military, the authorities in Gaza claimed.
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The strikes come as American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators, as well as Israeli officials, meet in Doha for the latest talks aimed at pushing through a deal for a ceasefire the release of and hostages.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, met Brett McGurk, the US special envoy, on Wednesday, with Netanyahu’s office issuing a statement that the prime minister “emphasised his commitment to a deal as long as Israel’s red lines are preserved”.
US officials have since said they would begin transporting to Israel 500-pound bombs that the Biden administration had suspended shipment of in May because of the IDF’s plans to invade the southern city of Rafah. A shipment of 2000-pound bombs is reportedly still on hold.
Hamas has warned that continuing Israeli operations in Gaza City could have “disastrous repercussions” for the protracted ceasefire talks, accusing Netanyahu of “manoeuvres and crimes” before efforts aimed at reaching a deal to end the war.
Nationwide protests across Israel have called on Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire and secure the release of hostages, with polling from the Israel Democracy Institute research centre suggesting 56 per cent of the population support ending the war in Gaza with a hostage release deal.
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Relatives of Israeli hostages, a group that has long pressured Netanyahu to help rescue their loved ones, began a four-day march on Wednesday from Tel Aviv to the seat of government in Jerusalem.
“We want all of Israel to come out with us” and “remind Netanyahu that … he needs to sign a deal to bring them back and stop this terrible war,” said Ayala Metzger, the daughter-in-law of the hostage Yoram Metzger, who died in captivity.
The Israeli prime minister faces heavy opposition to a ceasefire deal from hardline members of his ruling coalition, however, who do not want to see an end to the war.
“Hamas is collapsing and begging for a ceasefire,” Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, wrote on Twitter/X earlier this week. “This is the time to squeeze the neck until we crush and break the enemy. To stop now, just before the end, and let him recover and fight us again, is a senseless folly.”
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, said on Wednesday that 60 per cent of Hamas fighters had been killed or wounded as a result of the military offensive in Gaza.
The war began last October when fighters led by Hamas, which controlled Gaza, attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures. More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military offensive since then, according to Gazan health officials.
