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Israeli airstrikes killed at least 100 Palestinians across Gaza on Thursday, including 27 or more people taking shelter in a school, according to Palestinian health officials. The intensified offensive is part of what Israel’s military says is an effort to pressure Hamas and ultimately expel the group. Nine killed in Israeli strikes in Syria Health Ministry spokesman Zaher al-Wahidi reported that the bodies of 14 children and five women were retrieved from the school in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighbourhood. He added that the death toll may climb, as several of the 70 injured are in critical condition. Another 30-plus residents were reportedly killed in airstrikes on homes in the adjacent Shijaiyah area, based on Ahli Hospital records. The Israeli military said it had targeted a “Hamas command and control centre” in Gaza City and claimed it took precautions to minimise civilian harm. This justification — striking Hamas militants — was also cited for a previous attack on a United Nations shelter, which killed at least 17 people. Hamas denounced the school bombing as a “heinous massacre” of civilians. As the strikes continued, Israel’s military ordered further evacuations from parts of northern Gaza, instructing residents to move west or south to shelters. Many fled on foot — some carrying possessions on their backs, others using donkey carts. “My wife and I have been walking for three hours and covered only a kilometre,” said 72-year-old Mohammad Ermana, walking with a cane alongside his wife. “Now, I’m searching for a new shelter every hour, not every day.” Israel has issued broad evacuation orders in anticipation of ground operations. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said around 280,000 Palestinians have been displaced since Israel ended its ceasefire with Hamas last month. These latest evacuation directives followed statements from Israeli officials that they plan to seize large areas of Gaza and create a new security corridor. To pressure Hamas, Israel has enforced a month-long blockade on food, fuel, and aid — a measure human rights groups have condemned as a war crime. Hamas has stated it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, a permanent ceasefire, and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The group has rejected demands to disarm or leave the territory. Another Deadly Day in Gaza Israeli air raids overnight killed at least 55 people in Gaza, hospital sources reported Thursday. In Khan Younis, the bodies of 14 individuals, including five children and four women, were brought to Nasser Hospital — nine from the same family. The European Hospital near the city received the bodies of another 19, including five children aged 1 to 7 and a pregnant woman. In Gaza City, 21 more bodies, including those of seven children, were taken to Ahli Hospital. Later in the day, four additional people were killed in Khan Younis, with their bodies also taken to Nasser Hospital. Two more people were killed in central Gaza and taken to Al Aqsa Hospital. Meanwhile, the Israeli military said it would launch an independent investigation into a March 23 operation in which its forces fired on ambulances in southern Gaza. According to U.N. officials, 15 medics and emergency workers were killed, and their bodies, along with the ambulances, were buried by Israeli troops in a mass grave. Initially, the Israeli military claimed the ambulances were acting suspiciously and that nine militants had been killed. The military stated that a special fact-finding team would lead the investigation. However, rights groups argue that such inquiries rarely lead to accountability. Younes Al-Khatib, head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that some of the medics may have still been alive when Israeli forces overtook them. He said the group’s radio operators overheard a Hebrew-language conversation between Israeli soldiers and the medics after the ambulances were attacked. Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour submitted a video to the Security Council that he claims depicts the moments leading up to the killing of 15 humanitarian workers in Gaza. He said the footage, allegedly recovered from the body of one of the victims, shows emergency vehicles travelling at night with lights on — clearly signalling to Israeli forces. Nevertheless, Mansour said the Israeli army ambushed the convoy. Israel’s Gaza Strategy On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to create a security corridor across Gaza to increase pressure on Hamas. This move would isolate the southern city of Rafah — currently under evacuation orders — from the rest of the enclave. Israel has also reinforced control of the Netzarim corridor, which separates northern Gaza from the rest of the territory. This and another corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt stretch from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean. Netanyahu also said on Sunday that Israel intends to retain overall security control of Gaza following the war, and he endorsed former U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal for “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians — a suggestion viewed by Palestinians as forced expulsion and condemned by human rights experts as likely breaching international law. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and fighters but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel claims to have killed about 20,000 militants, though it has not provided verification. Much of Gaza now lies in ruins, with nearly 90% of the population displaced at the peak of the war. The conflict began when Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing roughly 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking 251 hostages. Most hostages have since been freed in ceasefire deals and other agreements. Israel has rescued eight hostages alive and recovered many bodies. Netanyahu Travels Despite ICC Warrant Netanyahu arrived in Hungary early Thursday — his second overseas visit since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him in November over Israel’s actions in Gaza. The ICC, based in The Hague, stated there is reason to believe that Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant used starvation as a method of war and deliberately targeted civilians — charges both deny. Although Hungary is an ICC member and technically obliged to arrest those under warrant, the court has no enforcement mechanism and depends on states’ cooperation. Hungary announced plans to initiate withdrawal from the ICC as Netanyahu landed in Budapest. Strike in Lebanon At least two people were killed early Friday in a suspected Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon. An AP photographer saw emergency crews carry two bodies from the building. The Israeli military has yet to comment. It marks the first strike in Sidon since a ceasefire halted the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in late November. Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to carry out airstrikes against targets it claims belong to Hezbollah and allied groups.

When the first explosions struck Gaza at around 1:30 am this week, a visiting British doctor stepped onto the balcony of a hospital in Khan Younis and watched as missiles streaked across the sky before slamming into the city. Beside him, a Palestinian surgeon gasped, “Oh no. Oh no.” After two months of ceasefire, the devastation of Israeli bombardment had returned. The experienced surgeon turned to the visiting doctor, Sakib Rokadiya, and urged him to head to the emergency ward. Israel orders troops to go deeper into Gaza Soon, torn bodies poured in—brought by ambulances, donkey carts, or carried by desperate relatives. What shocked the doctors most was the number of children. “Child after child, young patient after young patient,” Rokadiya recalled. “The vast majority were women, children, and the elderly.” Thus began a chaotic 24 hours at Nasser Hospital, the largest medical facility in southern Gaza. The sudden Israeli offensive shattered the ceasefire that had been in place since mid-January, aiming to pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages and accepting revised terms of the truce. It became one of the deadliest days in the 17-month war. The aerial assaults killed 409 people across Gaza, including 173 children and 88 women, while hundreds more were wounded, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count. More than 300 casualties inundated Nasser Hospital. Like other hospitals in Gaza, it had suffered damage from Israeli raids and airstrikes throughout the war, leaving it without essential equipment and running low on antibiotics and other necessities. After the first phase of the ceasefire expired on March 2, Israel blocked the entry of medicine, food, and supplies into Gaza. Triage The hospital’s emergency ward overflowed with the wounded, described to The Associated Press by Rokadiya and Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American paediatrician—both volunteers with the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. The injured came from a tent camp, where missiles had ignited a fire, and from homes struck in Khan Younis and Rafah, further south. A nurse was desperately trying to resuscitate a boy sprawled on the floor, shrapnel embedded in his heart. Nearby, a young man sat trembling, most of his arm missing. A barefoot boy carried in his younger brother, no older than four, whose foot had been blown off. Blood covered the floor, mixed with fragments of bone and tissue. “I was overwhelmed, running from corner to corner, trying to decide who to prioritise, who to send to surgery, who to declare beyond saving,” Haj-Hassan said. “It’s an incredibly difficult decision, and we had to make it repeatedly,” she said in a voice message. Some wounds were easy to overlook. One little girl seemed fine—she only felt pain when she breathed, she told Haj-Hassan. But once undressed, doctors realised she was bleeding into her lungs. Looking through the curly hair of another girl, Haj-Hassan discovered shrapnel embedded in her brain. Two or three injured patients were crammed onto gurneys and rushed to surgery, Rokadiya said. He scribbled notes on slips of paper or directly onto patients’ skin—one for surgery, another for a scan. He wrote names when he could, but many children arrived with no known relatives, their parents either dead, wounded, or lost in the chaos. Often, he simply wrote “UNKNOWN.” In the Operating Room Dr Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon from California volunteering with the medical charity MedGlobal, rushed to the hospital’s designated area for the gravely wounded who still had a chance of survival. But the first child he saw—a girl around three or four years old—was beyond help. Her face was torn apart by shrapnel. “She was technically still alive,” Sidhwa said, but with so many other patients needing urgent care, “there was nothing we could do.” He had to tell the girl’s father that she was dying. Then he moved on, performing around 15 surgeries back to back. Palestinian surgeon Khaled Alserr and an Irish volunteer surgeon worked tirelessly alongside him. They operated on a 29-year-old woman with a shattered pelvis, her web of veins bleeding profusely. Despite their efforts, she died 10 hours later in the ICU. Another patient was a six-year-old boy with two holes in his heart, two in his colon, and three more in his stomach, Sidhwa said. They managed to repair the damage and even restarted his heart after he went into cardiac arrest. But he, too, died hours later. “They died because the ICU simply didn’t have the capacity to care for them,” Sidhwa said. Ahmed al-Farra, head of the hospital’s paediatrics and obstetrics department, explained that the ICU lacked critical antibiotics, among other essential supplies. Israel resumes Gaza war with broader goals and fewer limits Sidhwa reflected on his experience at Boston Medical Center when the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing happened, killing three people and injuring around 260 others. “Boston Medical couldn’t have handled the number of cases we saw at Nasser Hospital,” he said. The Hospital Staff Rokadiya was struck by the resilience of the hospital staff as they cared for each other while under immense pressure. Workers moved through the hospital, handing out water to exhausted doctors and nurses. Cleaners worked swiftly to remove the bloodied clothing, blankets, tissues, and medical waste piling up on the floors. At the same time, many staff members were dealing with personal tragedies. Alserr, the Palestinian surgeon, had to go to the morgue to identify the bodies of his wife’s father and brother. “The only thing I saw was a bundle of flesh and bones, melted and shattered,” he said in a voice message, without elaborating on how they were killed. Another staff member lost his wife and children. An anaesthesiologist—who had already lost his mother and 21 relatives earlier in the war—later received word that his father, brother, and cousin had been killed, Haj-Hassan said. The Aftermath Around 85 people died at Nasser Hospital that Tuesday, including about 40 children between the ages of one and 17, al-Farra reported. Airstrikes continued throughout the week, killing several dozen more. Among the dead were at least six senior Hamas figures. Israel has vowed to continue its offensive against Hamas, insisting the group must release more hostages, despite having disregarded ceasefire conditions requiring negotiations for a long-term end to the war. The Israeli government maintains it does not target civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths, arguing that the group operates within civilian areas. Tuesday’s bombardment also helped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consolidate his political standing. The offensive secured the return of a right-wing party to his coalition, strengthening his government ahead of a crucial budget vote that could have led to its collapse. Haj-Hassan continues to check on the children in Nasser’s ICU. The girl with shrapnel in her brain remains unable to move her right side. Her mother, limping from her own injuries, came to see her and told Haj-Hassan that the little girl’s sisters had been killed. “I cannot begin to process or comprehend the scale of mass killing and the slaughter of families in their sleep that we are witnessing here,” Haj-Hassan said. “This cannot be the world we live in.”

Israel's military announced on Wednesday that it had initiated a “limited ground operation” aimed at reclaiming a portion of a vital Gaza corridor. This escalation appears to intensify Israel's renewed offensive in Gaza, which has broken the ceasefire with Hamas that began in January. As part of the ceasefire agreement, Israel had withdrawn from the Netzarim corridor, a former military zone that divided northern Gaza from the south. Israeli strikes killing hundreds in Gaza are 'Only the Beginning': Netanyahu In other developments, a United Nations staff member was killed, and five others were injured in a strike on a U.N. guesthouse in Gaza on Wednesday, as Israel continued its new offensive, breaking the fragile ceasefire with Hamas. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned of intensifying the assault and stated that evacuations from combat zones would soon be ordered. He also issued a stern warning regarding hostages, asserting that if they were not freed, Israel would act with unprecedented force. Jorge Moreira da Silva, head of the U.N. Office for Project Services (UNOPS), refrained from specifying who was behind the strike in Deir al-Balah, but confirmed that the explosion was intentional and not connected to demining activities. He stated that Israel had been informed of the U.N. facility's location after the first strike and had acknowledged it as a U.N. site. The injured were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in Deir al-Balah. The Israeli military denied earlier claims that it had targeted the U.N. compound, but Moreira da Silva revealed that strikes had hit near the compound on Monday, and directly on Tuesday and Wednesday, resulting in the death of the U.N. staff member. There have been no reports of rocket fire or other militant attacks from Gaza since Israel began its airstrikes early Tuesday, effectively ending the ceasefire with Hamas. The ongoing bombardment has resulted in at least 436 deaths, including 183 children and 94 women, with another 678 people wounded, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The military has stated that it targets only militants, attributing civilian casualties to Hamas, which operates in densely populated areas. In the new offensive, the Israeli military claimed to have struck numerous militants and their sites, including the command center of a Hamas battalion. Israel confirms killing Hamas's 'head of government' in Gaza The escalation of violence threatens to return the region to full-scale war after a ceasefire agreement brokered in January had briefly paused the conflict. During this pause, Israel and Hamas had engaged in prisoner exchanges and were poised to negotiate an extension of the truce. However, these talks never materialized, as Hamas demanded Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza and the cessation of the war, while Israel proposed extending the truce and securing the release of more hostages without committing to ending the conflict.

A group of 50 Palestinian children who are sick and injured began crossing into Egypt for medical treatment on Saturday through Gaza's Rafah crossing, marking the first time the border has been opened in nearly nine months, reports AP. This reopening is a significant development in the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was reached earlier this month. Israel had agreed to allow the crossing to reopen after Hamas released the last surviving female hostages in Gaza. Malaysia to build mosque, school, hospital in Gaza: Anwar Egypt's Al-Qahera television broadcast footage showing Palestinian Red Cross ambulances arriving at the crossing gate, with some children being transferred from gurneys to ambulances on the Egyptian side. These children were then taken to hospitals in the Egyptian city of el-Arish and other locations. Among them was a young girl who had lost her foot and was seen being loaded into an Egyptian ambulance. The Gaza Health Ministry reported that about 60 family members accompanied the children. These children are the first in what is expected to be a series of regular evacuations for treatment abroad. Over the past 15 months, Israel's military actions in Gaza, which were in response to Hamas's attack on Israel in October 2023, have severely damaged Gaza's health infrastructure, leaving most hospitals inoperable. More than 110,000 Palestinians have been injured, and there is a dire need for treatment, especially for specialized surgeries. Thousands of Palestinians return to a shattered northern Gaza According to Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza's Health Ministry, over 6,000 patients are ready for evacuation, while more than 12,000 are in urgent need of care. However, he noted that the small number of evacuations will not meet the overall demand, expressing hope that more patients would be evacuated in the future. Rafah is Gaza's only crossing that does not connect to Israel. Israeli forces took control of the Rafah crossing in May, following an offensive in the southern region of Gaza. Egypt also closed its side of the border in protest. Prior to the war, the Rafah crossing had been essential for allowing Palestinians to seek medical treatment abroad, including chemotherapy, as Gaza's health system was severely constrained by a 15-year blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt. The process of reopening the crossing required diplomatic efforts and the resolution of security issues among Israeli, Egyptian, and Palestinian officials. Hamas had controlled the Rafah border since 2007 after it took over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel bars thousands of Palestinians from northern Gaza over ceasefire dispute Israel continues to maintain a military presence at the Rafah crossing and the nearby Philadelphia Corridor, a strip of land along the border. It has refused to allow Hamas to take control of the crossing again, accusing it of smuggling weapons through tunnels, although Egypt claims to have destroyed these tunnels years ago. Israel also rejects the idea of the PA officially managing the crossing. Instead, Palestinian border officers who were previously employed by the PA will staff the crossing, although they will not wear PA insignia. European Union monitors will also be present, as they were before 2007. Negotiations regarding the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, which involves a permanent ceasefire, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the release of remaining hostages, are set to begin on Monday. Israel has expressed resistance to the idea of the PA overseeing Gaza post-conflict.

Suzy Ishkontana hardly speaks or eats. It’s been two days since the 7-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of what was once her family’s home, destroyed amid a barrage of Israeli airstrikes. She spent hours buried in the wreckage as her siblings and mother died around her. Children are being subjected to extensive trauma in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip. For some, it’s trauma they’ve seen repeatedly throughout their short lives. This is the fourth time in 12 years Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers have gone to war. Each time, Israel has unleashed heavy airstrikes at the densely populated Gaza Strip as it vows to stop Hamas rocket barrages launched toward Israel. According to Gaza health officials, at least 63 children are among the 217 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza since the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas began on May 10. On the Israeli side, 12 people have been killed by Hamas rockets, all but one of them civilians, including a 5-year-old boy. Read:US reaches out to Arab leaders on Israel, Gaza fighting Israel says it does everything it can to prevent civilian casualties, including issuing warnings for people to evacuate buildings about to be struck. As Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, most of them intercepted by anti-missile defenses, Israel’s military has pounded hundreds of sites in Gaza, where some 2 million people live squeezed into a tight urban fabric. Videos on social media from Gaza have shown the grief of survivors from families wiped out in an instant. “They were four! Where are they? Four!” wailed one father outside a hospital after learning all four of his children had been killed. Another showed a young boy screaming “Baba,” as he ran to the front of the funeral procession where men were carrying his father’s body to burial. The Ishkontana family was buried under the rubble of their home early Sunday, after massive bombing raids of downtown Gaza City that Israel said were targeting a Hamas tunnel network. The strikes came without warning. Riad Ishkontana recounted to The Associated Press how he was buried for five hours under the wreckage, pinned under a chunk of concrete, unable to reach his wife and five children. “I was listening to their voices beneath the rubble. I heard Dana and Zain calling, ‘Dad! Dad!’ before their voices faded and then I realized they had died,” he said, referring to two of his children. After he was rescued and taken to the hospital, he said, family and staff hid the truth from him as long as they could. “I learned about their deaths one after another,” he said. Finally, Suzy was brought in alive, the second-oldest of his three daughters and two sons, and the only survivor. Though she had only limited physical bruising from her seven hours under the rubble, the young girl was in “severe trauma and shock,” said pediatrician Dr. Zuhair Al-Jaro. The hospital was unable to get her the psychological treatment she needs because of the ongoing fighting, he said. “She has entered into a deep depression,” he said. Only today, he said Tuesday, did she eat something after she was allowed briefly outside the hospital and saw her cousins. As her father spoke to the AP, Suzy sat on the bed next to him, silent and studying the faces of the people in the room but rarely making eye contact. When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she turned away. When her father started to answer for her, saying she wanted to become a doctor, the girl began sobbing loudly. Read:Israel, Hamas trade fire in Gaza; Palestinians go on strike Ishkontana, 42, who recently stopped working as a waiter because of coronavirus lockdowns, said Suzy is smart and tech-savvy and loves smartphones and tablets. “She explores them, she has more experience dealing with them than I do,” he said. She also loves studying and would gather all her siblings into a play “class,” taking the role of their teacher, he said. The Ishkontanas were just one family destroyed that day. The strikes Sunday targeted Hamas tunnels running under Gaza City, the Israeli military said. The warplanes pounded al-Wahda Street, one of the city’s busiest commercial avenues, lined with apartment buildings with stores, bakeries, cafes and electronics shops on the ground floors. Three buildings collapsed, and multiple people from at least three families were killed. In all 42 people died, including 10 children and 16 women. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, called the situation that led to the deaths “abnormal.” He said in one location the airstrikes caused a tunnel to collapse, bringing houses down with it, “and that caused a large amount of civilian casualties, which were not the aim.” He said the military was analyzing what happened and “attempting to recalibrate” its ordnance to prevent a reoccurrence. He said the bombing campaign targeting tunnel networks would be expanded to more areas of Gaza and that the military tries when possible to hit tunnels under roads rather than under houses. Israel and Hamas have fought similar conflicts in 2009, 2012 and 2014, each time wreaking heavy destruction The Norwegian Refugee Council said that 11 of the children killed so far in this war had been going through its psycho-social programs helping children deal with trauma — a sign of how children repeatedly are victimized by the violence. Among them was 8-year-old Dana, Suzy’s sister. “It’s the fourth time for many of them to experience” bombardment around their homes, said Hozayfa Yazji, the refugee council area field manager. Parents in Gaza desperately try to calm their terrified children, as bombs rain down, telling the youngest ones it’s just fireworks or trying to put up a cheerful front. Read:India calls for end to violence in Israel, Gaza The violence “will of course affect the psychology of these kids,” he said. “We are expecting that ... the situation will be much worse and more children will need more support.” The refugee council works with 118 schools in Gaza, reaching more than 75,000 students through its Better Learning Program. The program trains teachers to deal with traumatized children and organizes fun exercises to relieve stress. It also does home-checks on children to provide help. The council’s secretary-general, Jan Egeland, called for an immediate cease-fire, saying, “Spare these children and their families. Stop bombing them now.” But he said, longer term, an end to the blockade on Gaza and occupation of Palestinian territory is necessary “if we are to avoid more trauma and death among children.”