‘BOMBARDMENT is overwhelming the entire Gaza Strip, with no respite since the early hours of this morning,’ Palestinians reported from Gaza yesterday.
At least nine Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a market in Deir Al Balah in central Gaza yesterday afternoon, with children among the dead.
In the morning, the genocidal regime had bombed Mustafa Hafez School in western Gaza City, killing at least 12 people, mainly children, but also including a Palestinian journalist reporting on the Zionist bombing of schools.
The school had been sheltering at least 700 families from different parts of the Gaza Strip, especially the northern part.
After the Israeli forces targeted the school, the ceiling collapsed, forcing Civil Defence teams, who do not have appropriate equipment, to try to rescue people with their bare hands.
Israel’s military – without offering any evidence – claimed Hamas operatives were ‘embedded’ in the school, and using a hidden ‘command centre’ there.
The Civil Defence teams reported early yesterday afternoon that they’re still searching under the rubble for more bodies but have only been able to retrieve 12 so far, among them children, women and journalist Hamzah Mortaja, who was working on a story about displaced Palestinians in schools.
Hamzah is the brother of Yasser Mortaja, another journalist who was killed in the Great March of Return in 2018.
One of the Zionist genocidal attacks yesterday was on the Shati refugee camp, which killed seven personal guards of the assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Another overnight attack on a car in northern Gaza killed at least four.
In central Gaza, the Israeli military destroyed a family house in the Bureij refugee camp without any warning, killing six Palestinians.
Hamas said yesterday that the United States is ‘buying time’ for the Israeli regime so the latter can continue its war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.
Osama Hamdan, the group’s representative in Lebanon, said: ‘We agreed to the original proposal presented by Biden, but the US administration failed to convince (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.’
‘The Israelis backtracked on issues including Biden’s proposal,’ he said.
Following Tel Aviv’s U-turn, the US, Egypt, and Qatar, which have been mediating talks aimed at concluding a truce agreement, said they had come up with a new scheme.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also claimed afterwards that Netanyahu had ‘accepted’ the plan.
Hamdan, however, asserted that Hamas would only agree to implementation of the previous proposal.
The former proposal had featured, among other things, a permanent ceasefire, the regime’s withdrawal from Gaza, and a reconstruction process.
The Hamas spokesman likewise underlined that any agreement ‘must include five specific points, including stopping the aggression, withdrawing from Gaza, and reconstruction.
‘We are still committed to our obligations and are ready to implement them immediately. The one obstructing the efforts to reach an agreement is Netanyahu,’ he added.
US Secretary of State Blinken has travelled to Egypt to meet with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
After their meeting, Sisi said the time had come to end the Gaza war, which risks throwing the entire region into a broader conflict that is ‘difficult to imagine’.
Former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Hussein Haridy said questions over the status of the Philadelphi Corridor will be crucial.
Egypt has always rejected a permanent Israeli military presence in the Philadelphi Corridor as well as Israeli control over the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing,’ Haridy said. ‘This remains the Egyptian position.’
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