Ahead of the planned four-day pause in hostilities, Israel says the war will continue for two months after a “brief respite.”
Hamas said around 30 people were killed in an Israeli attack on a United Nations-affiliated school in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, as time runs out for a planned truce between the Palestinian group and Israel.
On Thursday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported 27 deaths following the strike on the Abu Hussein School run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which housed Displaced Palestinians fleeing violence and intense bombardment in other parts of Gaza.
Israeli forces also launched new attacks on the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, targeting the main entrance and electricity generators.
Ashraf al-Qudra, a ministry spokesman, said the hospital had come under “intense shelling” and “large parts of the building” were targeted.
More than 200 patients, medical staff and displaced people were currently at Beit Lahiya hospital, which has been under siege for a week.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes struck the Sheikh Nasser neighborhood in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, killing at least five people and injuring dozens, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
It also reported that at least 10 people were killed when Israeli forces attacked a residential house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza.
In the occupied West Bank, Mohammed Ibrahim Fuad Edely, 12, was shot and killed by Israeli forces, according to the Palestinian ministry.
This incident brings to 229 the number of Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7, including 52 children.
Israel’s relentless bombardment has killed more than 14,800 people in Gaza since October 7, according to Palestinian officials. In Israel, the official death toll from Hamas attacks stands at around 1,200 dead.
Fight to continue
Mediator Qatar announced that a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas is expected to begin at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) on Friday.
But Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the upcoming break “a brief respite…at the end of which the fighting will continue intensely and we will create pressure to bring back more hostages” in an interview with a Navy special operations unit Thursday.
“At least two more months of fighting are expected,” he said.
Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said: “The outline (of the release from captivity) is not the end of the process but the beginning. »
“In the coming days, we will focus on planning and completing preparations for the next stages of the fight.”
A spokesman for Hamas’ military wing, Abu Obeida, said Palestinian fighters remained ready to confront Israeli forces as long as the war continued and called for resistance to Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.