JERUSALEM: Israel hit a Gaza school on Thursday with what it described as a targeted airstrike on up to 30 Hamas fighters inside. A Hamas official said 40 people, including women and children, were killed as they were taking shelter in the UN site.
Video footage showed Palestinians hauling away bodies after the attack, which took place at a sensitive moment in mediated talks on a ceasefire that would involve releasing hostages held by Hamas and some of the Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
The United States issued a joint statement with other countries on Thursday calling on Israel and Hamas to make whatever compromises were necessary to finalise a deal after eight months of war in the Gaza Strip.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Hamas-run government media office, rejected Israel’s assertion that the UN school in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, had hidden a Hamas command post.
“The occupation uses … false fabricated stories to justify the brutal crime it conducted against dozens of displaced people,” Thawabta said.
Israel’s military said its fighter jets had carried out a “precise strike” and circulated satellite photos highlighting two parts of a building where it said the fighters were based. “We’re very confident in the intelligence,” military spokesperson Lt Col Peter Lerner said, accusing Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters of deliberately using UN facilities as operational bases.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military has warned the government its policy of cutting off funds to the Palestinian Authority could push the occupied West Bank into a third “intifada”, public broadcaster Kan Radio reported on Thursday.
The warning underlined the increasingly dire state of the West Bank economy where thousands of workers have lost their jobs in Israel and public servants have been unpaid or on partial pay for months.