Gaza rescuers say 52 killed in Israeli strikes, including 33 in a school

A plume of smoke billows during Israeli bombardment at Al-Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City on April 16, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP file photo)

• The territory’s civil defense agency said many of the casualties at the school in Gaza City were children
• Germany’s chancellor voiced unusually strong criticism of Israel, saying: “I no longer understand what the Israeli army is now doing in the Gaza Strip, with what goal”

GAZA CITY: Rescuers said Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 52 people on Monday, 33 of them in a school-turned-shelter, as European allies ramped up their criticism of Israel.
While the war raged on, mediators presented a proposal for a 70-day ceasefire and hostage-release deal to Israel and Hamas, a Palestinian source said.
The territory’s civil defense agency said many of the casualties at the school in Gaza City were children, while the Israeli military said the site was housing “key terrorists.”
Israel has stepped up a renewed offensive to destroy Hamas, drawing international condemnation as aid trickles in following a blockade since early March that has sparked severe food and medical shortages.
It has also triggered international criticism, with European and Arab leaders meeting in Spain calling for an end to the “inhumane” and “senseless” war, while humanitarian groups said the trickle of aid was not nearly enough.
In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced unusually strong criticism of Israel, saying: “I no longer understand what the Israeli army is now doing in the Gaza Strip, with what goal.”
The impact on Gazan civilians “can no longer be justified,” he added.
Nevertheless, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin would continue selling weapons to Israel.
In Gaza City, civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an early-morning Israeli strike on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi school, where displaced people were sheltering, killed “at least 33, with dozens injured, mostly children.”
The Israeli military said it had “struck key terrorists who were operating within a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control center embedded in an area,” adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Another strike killed at least 19 people in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, Bassal said.
A Palestinian source meanwhile said that mediators proposed a 70-day ceasefire and the release of 10 Israeli hostages alongside some Palestinian prisoners.
A Hamas source said shortly after that the group had accepted the proposal for what would be the war’s third truce, saying it came from US envoy Steve Witkoff.
The Israeli military said on Monday that over “the past 48 hours, the (air force) struck over 200 targets throughout the Gaza Strip.”
It also said it had detected three projectiles launched from Gaza toward communities in Israel Monday, as the country prepared to celebrate Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking its capture of the city’s eastern sector in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
“Two projectiles fell in the Gaza Strip and one additional projectile was intercepted,” it said.
Later on Monday, it issued an evacuation order for areas of Khan Yunis, saying they had been the site of rocket launches.
The same day, as Arab and European nations gathered to seek an end to the war, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel.
He also called for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza “massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel,” describing the territory as humanity’s “open wound.”
Israel last week partially eased an aid blockade on Gaza that had exacerbated widespread shortages of food and medicine.
COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body that coordinates civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that “107 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid... were transferred” into Gaza on Sunday.
But aid agencies insist that is nowhere near enough, at just a fraction of what was allowed in during a two-month ceasefire.
While Israel has restricted aid into Gaza, the war has made growing food next to impossible, with the UN saying on Monday just five percent of Gaza’s farmland was now useable.
Meanwhile, Jake Wood, the head of a US-backed group preparing to move aid into Gaza, announced his resignation, saying it was impossible to do his job in line with principles of neutrality and independence.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has vowed to distribute about 300 million meals in its first 90 days of operation, and said in a statement it would begin “direct aid delivery” on Monday.
The UN and international aid agencies have said they will not cooperate with GHF and have heavily criticized its plans.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that at least 3,822 people had been killed in the territory since a ceasefire collapsed on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,977, mostly civilians.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.