Gaza’s civil defence agency said Wednesday that Israeli strikes on a school sheltering displaced people in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory killed 31 people and wounded dozens.
Gaza civil defence media officer Ahmad Radwan told AFP that a total of 31 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli strikes “on a school sheltering displaced persons” in the Bureij refugee camp in the centre of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military meanwhile said in a statement that its forces had struck a “Hamas command and control centre in the central Gaza Strip” which was used “to store weapons”.
The strikes came as Israel drew international condemnation on Tuesday over its plans for an expanded Gaza offensive, as the country’s far-right finance minister called for the Palestinian territory to be “destroyed”.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
On Tuesday, Hamas dismissed as pointless ceasefire talks with Israel, accusing it of waging a “hunger war” on Gaza.
Israel’s military resumed its offensive on the Gaza Strip in March, ending a two-month truce that saw a surge in aid into the territory and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Read More: Israel weaponizing ‘water’ in Gaza, warns UN rapporteur
Earlier, Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s water infrastructure and the ongoing denial of access to clean water for Palestinians amid the ongoing war are creating a growing humanitarian catastrophe, warned a UN expert, calling the situation a “silent but lethal bomb.”
“Cutting off drinking water to the population is like dropping a terrible silent bomb on them … silent but lethal,” Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, said in an interview with Turk news agency Anadolu.
Arrojo-Agudo described the critical water crisis facing the 2.1 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza, noting that nearly 70% of the enclave’s water infrastructure has been destroyed by Israeli forces. This destruction has left almost the entire population with either minimal access to water or water that is dangerously contaminated.
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