At least 61 people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza over the past two days, as Israel’s war on the besieged enclave enters its 12th month with no sign of respite for the Palestinian territory.
Israeli airstrikes killed more than a dozen people overnight Saturday, hospital and local authorities said, as health workers completed the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak.
Sources told A Jazeera that three women and two children were killed east of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza following Israeli shelling.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Civil Defense reported that an Israeli airstrike targeting a school converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians killed at least three people and injured 20 in the attack that targeted the Amr Ibn al-Aas school in the Abu Iskandar neighborhood of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza City.
The Israeli military said it carried out a “precise strike” on the school that targeted fighters “operating inside a Hamas command and control center… embedded in a compound that previously served as the Amr Ibn al-Aas school.”
“Incessant attacks”
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said the entire Gaza Strip had been under relentless Israeli strikes since the early hours of this morning, particularly in the north.
“There was a concentration of attacks in the town of Beit Lahiya, and the Israeli army intensively shelled the area with artillery,” he said.
“An airstrike also took place on an evacuation center in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza. Several casualties were reported from this attack.”
In recent months, Israeli forces have struck several schools housing displaced Palestinians, many in Gaza City, saying the strikes targeted Hamas fighters.
Israel’s war on Gaza has so far claimed nearly 41,000 lives, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Most of the victims are women and children, according to the United Nations.
Pro-Palestinian protests in London
Meanwhile, crowds of protesters gathered in central London on Saturday against Israel’s war on Gaza.
Protesters chanted slogans and carried banners as they gathered in the capital towards the Israeli embassy in South Kensington.
“Pro-Palestinian protesters held a rally in London this week, at which British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said his country would immediately suspend 30 of 350 arms export licenses to Israel,” Tel Aviv Tribune’s Sonia Gallego said, reporting from London.
“But for the people we’ve spoken to here, this is not nearly enough. As Lammy himself said, it certainly doesn’t go back as far as what happened in 1982, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher imposed a total arms embargo on Israel because of its involvement in the Lebanon war.
“However, people here are demanding that more be done. They want all arms exports to stop immediately because we are entering a nearly 11-month war on Gaza and the situation only seems to be getting worse.”
Call for investigation into activist’s murder
The UN also called for a “full investigation” into the killing by Israeli forces of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, as she protested illegal Israeli settlements in Beita in the occupied West Bank.
“We call for a full investigation into the circumstances of this incident and for those involved to be held accountable for their actions,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a news conference, adding that civilians “must be protected at all times.”
Eygi was “shot in the head” while taking part in Friday’s protest, the UN human rights office said.
His family also called for an investigation in a statement, saying that “his presence in our lives was needlessly, illegally and violently removed by the Israeli military.”
