GAZA: Dozens of displaced civilians were killed or wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees reported.
“The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help,” wounded survivor Ahmed Radwan said.
AP photos from a local hospital showed more than 20 bodies wrapped in bloodstained sheets.
“These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian cease-fire cannot wait any longer,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini posted on the social media platform X.
The Israeli military, which had warned Jabaliya residents and others in a social media post in Arabic to leave, said only that its troops were active in the Jabaliya area “with the aim of hitting terrorists” while trying to minimize civilian harm.
Israeli airstrikes killed at least 47 people in southern Gaza on Saturday, medics said, as Israel is expanding its assault on Hamas.
Early Saturday, an airstrike on two apartment buildings in Khan Younis killed 26 Palestinians and wounded 23, health officials said.
Six more were killed a few kilometers north when a house in the town of Deir Al-Balah was bombed, health officials said.
Fifteen Palestinians died Saturday afternoon in a house west of Khan Younis near a shelter for displaced people, medics and witnesses said.
‘We’re asking people to relocate’
Israel had issued new warnings Friday for Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis to relocate, indicating a possible expansion of its war against Hamas into areas of the Gaza Strip where Israeli officials earlier had told people it was safe to stay.
“We’re asking people to relocate,” Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC. “I know it’s not easy for many of them, but we don’t want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire.”
(AP/VOA)
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