Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told troops that Hamas was weakening, but that the pursuit of the group and its leaders could “continue for years.”
At least 15 people were killed and dozens injured in an Israeli strike that hit the Abu Ariban school in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
The school, run by the UN refugee agency (UNRWA), was used as a shelter for displaced people.
“Those who go to school to protect themselves are targeted. We don’t want anything. We just want to be safe. But now neither school, nor home, no place is safe. They target everything” said Um Fadi Al-Zeer, one of the displaced women living in the school.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it had struck “terrorists who allegedly operated in the area and set up camp in the UNRWA school“.
The attack comes just a day after at least 90 people were killed and 300 others injured in a massive Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Mohammed Deif targeted
The Israeli military announced that Rafa Salama, a Hamas commander, was killed in the airstrike. It primarily targeted his superior, Mohammed Deif nicknamed “the ghost” and which Israel has been trying to eliminate for more than 30 years.
It is not yet known whether he is still alive. Hamas claims he survived the attack. And indicates that negotiations for a ceasefire are continuing.
The strike was one of the deadliest in the nine-month war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 incursion into southern Israel, which left about 1,200 Israelis dead, mostly civilians, and more than 200 people taken hostage.
Meanwhile, in northern Israel, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with troops from Nevatim airbase.
He praised the military’s efforts to defeat Hamas, but warned that pursuing the group “would continue for years.”
“Hamas is weakening every day, it is paying the price and its capacity to strengthen itself is very low. We have moved closer to Rafah, we are hitting its command posts, its weapons warehouses, its communication rooms, everywhere where weapons are produced. The result is that it does not have the capacity to arm itself, to organize itself and to treat the wounded.“, did he declare.
An increasingly serious humanitarian situation
In northern Gaza, charities have set up soup kitchens to try to feed the population, as aid continues to trickle into the enclave and supplies dwindle.
More than 80 percent of the territory’s 2.3 million people have been displaced by the fighting, and many have been forced to move again and again.
Many now live in makeshift tent camps, with limited access to food and clean water.
International experts say hundreds of thousands of people in the Gaza Strip are on the brink of starvation.