Israeli strikes killed at least 60 people across Gaza yesterday in some of the heaviest attacks in weeks as Israeli officials were due in Washington for a new ceasefire push by US President Donald Trump.
“Explosions never stopped; they bombed schools and homes. It felt like earthquakes,” said Salah, 60, a father of five children, from Gaza City.
“In the news we hear a ceasefire is near, on the ground we see death and we hear explosions,” he said.
“Look at us, we are not just numbers and not just pictures. Every day martyrs like this,” said displaced woman Amani Swalha, standing in the rubble of a Gaza city school hit in a strike. “It is our right to live, and to live with dignity, not like this in humiliation.”
Israeli tanks pushed into the eastern areas of Zeitoun suburb in Gaza City and shelled several areas in the north, while aircraft bombed at least four schools after ordering hundreds of families sheltering inside to leave, residents said.
At least 60 people were killed in Israeli strikes, health authorities said, including 10 people killed in Zeitoun and at least 13 killed in southwest of Gaza City. Medics said most of the 13 were hit by gunfire, but residents also reported an air strike.
Twenty-two people, including women, children and a local journalist, were killed in an Israeli air strike on a beachfront cafe in Gaza City, medics said. The Palestinian Journalist Syndicate said more than 220 journalists had been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023.
The bombardment followed new evacuation orders to vast areas in the north, where Israeli forces had operated before and left behind wide-scale destruction. The military ordered people there to head south, saying that it planned to fight Hamas operating in northern Gaza, including in the heart of Gaza City.
Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger, speaking in Jerusalem alongside her Israeli counterpart, said the humanitarian situation in Gaza was ‘unbearable’.
“The suffering of civilians is increasingly burdening Israel’s relations with Europe. A ceasefire must be agreed upon,” she said, calling for the unconditional release of hostages by Hamas and for Israel to allow the uninterrupted flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Israel says it continues to allow aid into Gaza and accuses Hamas of stealing it. The group denies that accusation and says Israel uses hunger as a weapon against the Gaza population.
The US has proposed a 60-day ceasefire and the release of half the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and the remains of other Palestinians. Hamas would release the remaining hostages as part of a deal that guarantees ending the war.
Israel’s military assault has killed more than 56,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry, displaced almost the whole 2.3 million population and plunged the enclave into a humanitarian crisis.
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