The Israeli strike on school kills 27, says the Ministry of Health

At least 27 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike in a school in the north of Gaza which served as shelters for displaced families, according to the Ministry of Health managed by Hamas.

Dozens of others were injured when the Dar al-Arqam school in the Northeast Tuffah district of Gaza City was struck, a local hospital said.

The Israeli army said that it had struck “eminent terrorists who were part of a Hamas command and control center” in the city, without mentioning a school.

The Ministry of Health previously pointed out the murder of 97 other people in Israeli attacks in the previous 24 hours, because Israel said that its ground offensive relaxed to seize large parts of the Palestinian territory.

The spokesperson for the Civil Defense Agency led by Gaza, Mahmoud Bassal, said that children and women were among the dead after the Dar al-Arqam school strike.

He also said that a woman who was very pregnant with twins was missing with her husband, sister and three children.

The video of the neighboring hospital of Al-Ahli has shown that children have transported themselves to cars and trucks with serious injuries.

A declaration by Israeli Defense Forces (FDI) said that the Gaza City site he struck had been used by Hamas fighters to plan attacks against civilians and Israeli troops.

He added that many measures had been taken to mitigate civilians’ damage.

Overnight, at least 12 people were killed when several houses in the Gaza City Shejaiya district were struck, the civil defense said.

He published a video that seemed to show the bodies of two young children drawn by rescuers of the remains of a collapsed building.

A witness, who asked not to be appointed, told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline Program which he had slept when he was “suddenly shaken by a violent explosion and discovered that this had happened at the house of our neighbors, the Ayyad family”.

There was no immediate commentary on the FS Fiber, but Thursday morning, he ordered residents of Shejaiya and four neighboring areas to immediately evacuate west of the city of Gaza, warning that it “operated with great strength … to destroy the terrorist infrastructure”.

This week, the FDIs have published similar evacuation orders for several northern Gaza areas, as well as the whole city in the south of Rafah and certain parts of Khan Younis neighboring, encouraging around 100,000 Palestinians to flee, according to the UN.

Israel has renewed its air bombing and its ground offensive in Gaza on March 18 after the first phase of a cease-fire and hostage release agreement concluded with Hamas in January and negotiations on a second phase of the agreement were stopped.

TSAhal chief spokesperson Brig-Gen Effie Defrin, a briefing that his operation had “progressed to another scene” in recent days on Thursday.

“We have expanded operations in the south of Gaza in order to surround and divide the Rafah region,” he said. “In the north of Gaza, our troops operate against terrorist targets, clean the area and dismantle terrorist infrastructure.”

He added that in the past two weeks, Israeli forces have reached more than 600 “terrorist targets” in Gaza and “eliminated more than 250 terrorists”.

Before the strike in Tuffah, the Gaza Ministry of Health said that at least 1,163 people had been killed during the same period. A United Nations said that they included more than 300 children.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli Prime Minister said the Israeli forces created another military corridor that would cut Rafah from Khan Younis.

He argued that military pressure would oblige Hamas to release the 59 remaining hostages he has, 24 of which would be lived.

However, Hamas said that it would not engage with Israel’s latest proposal for a new ceasefire, which would have been coordinated with the United States, one of the negotiation mediators.

The Palestinian group said that he had only accepted the plan put forward by the other two mediators, Qatar and Egypt, for a 50 -day truce.

The complete details of this plan have not been disclosed, but it is understood that the regional proposal would see five hostages released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from certain parts of Gaza where they recently redeployed and the influx of humanitarian aid. There would also be negotiations at the end of the war.

Israel wants a larger number of hostages to be published at the start of a new truce.

In another development Thursday, the FDI said that the general staff disorder mechanism was investigating the murder of Israeli forces of 15 Palestinian emergency workers near Rafah on March 23, as well as their burial in what a UN manager described as a “serious mass”.

“We want to have all the facts in an exact way and we can also hold responsible people if we need it,” said a TSAhal spokesperson.

A Palestinian paramedic who survived the attack, addressing the BBC, disputed the Israeli account The way five ambulances, a firefighter’s sheet and a United Nations vehicle were dismissed during the response to emergency calls.

The military said that the vehicles advanced “with suspicion” to its troops without headlights or emergency signals. He also said that a Hamas agent and “eight other terrorists” were one of those who were killed, but only appointed.

The survivor, Munther Abed, insisted that “all the lights were lit” until the vehicles were under direct fire. He also rejected the army’s assertion that Hamas could have used ambulances as a cover, saying that all emergency workers were civilians.

The Israeli army launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross -border attack on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

Since then, more than 50,520 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health of the territory.