Israeli strikes kill 13 Palestinians despite calls for ceasefire

Despite repeated calls for cessation of hostilities, no fewer than 13 Palestinians were killed and 15 others wounded in Israeli airstrikes targeting a school sheltering refugees and a residential building in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency WAFA reported early Saturday.

According to WAFA, eight of the fatalities occurred in refugee tents at Halima al-Sa’diyya School in Jabalia, located in northern Gaza.

Commenting on the attack, the Israeli army said in a statement it had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre… embedded inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Halima al-Sa’diyya’ School in the northern Gaza Strip.”

In a separate incident, five more Palestinians were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.

The latest escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which intensified after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, has resulted in over 40,800 Palestinian deaths, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Nearly the entire population of 2.3 million in the enclave has been displaced, with the UN reporting that around 1.9 million people are internally displaced across Gaza.