JERUSALEM/CAIRO:Gaza´s civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter on Saturday killed eight people, including two children, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed eight people, including two children and two women, were killed by Israeli shelling on the Halwa school in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia.
Bassal said the strike would 30 people, including 19 children, and that the Halwa school housed “thousands of displaced people”.
The Israeli military, in a statement, acknowledged it conducted a strike on the facility.
It said the air force “conducted a precise strike on terrorists in a command-and-control centre” that had previously served as the Halwa school in Jabaliya.
It said it targeted the premises because “the school had been used by Hamas terrorists to plan and execute attacks”.
The attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where fighting has raged for more than 14 months. Later on Saturday, the Gaza Civil Emergency Service said five people were killed and several others were wounded in two Israeli strikes.
One of the two strikes killed three people in a house near the Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday following his visit to Doha, an Israeli official said, amid efforts to secure a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza.
A second Israeli official said some progress had been made in the indirect talks between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, to reach a deal in Gaza.
The mediators are making new efforts to reach a deal to halt the fighting in the enclave and free the remaining Israeli hostages held there before Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
Witkoff arrived in Doha and met the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, according to a statement released by Qatar’s foreign ministry.
Egyptian and Qatari mediators received reassurances from Witkoff that the U.S. would continue to work towards a fair deal to end the war soon, Egyptian security sources said, though he did not give any details
In another development, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz instructed the military to present a plan for the “total defeat” of Hamas in Gaza if it does not release the hostages before Trump’s inauguration. It was not clear how such a plan would differ from existing Israeli military plans.
“We must not be dragged into a war of attrition against Hamas in Gaza, while the hostages remain in the tunnels, putting their lives at risk and suffering severely,” he told senior commanders, according to a defence ministry statement.
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