No let-up in Gaza violence as Israeli strikes kill 28

Attack on Abu Samra family in Deir Al Balah kills 13 people

GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes overnight and early Sunday killed at least 28 Palestinians, including at one family’s home and at a school building the military said was used by Hamas.

There was no let-up in the violence in the Gaza Strip more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war, even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was “closer than ever”.

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Civil agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said in a statement that at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir Al Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has confirmed a separate strike further north, on a school in Gaza City.

Bassal said that eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.

The Israeli military said it had carried out a “precise strike” overnight targeting Hamas militants operating there.

A military statement said that a Hamas “command and control centre... was embedded inside” the school compound in the city’s east, adding that it was used “to plan and execute terrorist attacks” against Israeli forces.

Contacted by AFP, an Israeli military spokesperson said they were unable to immediately comment on other reported strikes elsewhere in Gaza.

Bassal said an overnight strike killed three people in Rafah, in the south.

And a drone strike early on Sunday hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, Bassal said.

Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the war, and two other Palestinian armed groups said on Saturday in a rare joint statement that an agreement to end the bloodshed was “closer than ever”.

The groups, which include Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that a truce in Gaza and hostage release deal was possible provided Israel does not impose new conditions in negotiations.

Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, were held last week in Doha, rekindling hope of a potential breakthrough after months of stalling.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was “hopeful” for a deal, but avoided making any predictions as to when it would materialise.

The unprecedented Hamas attack last year that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 96 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 45,227 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.