Key points
- Israeli strikes have drawn condemnation from international community
- Spain calls for sanctions on Israel
- Seven Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a home in Jabalia: Gaza Civil defence
ISLAMABAD: Palestinian rescuers said an Israeli strike at dawn on Monday killed 20 Palestinians at a Gaza City school.
“Civil defence crews in Gaza City retrieved 20 martyrs and 21 injured from inside Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood, after the Israeli occupation forces targeted it at dawn today,” AFP cited Gaza’s civil defence agency as saying.
AFP reported that Israel has stepped up its brutal offensive this month. The intensified strikes have drawn condemnation from the international community as an aid blockade lasting almost three months has worsened shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine in Gaza.
Spain’s foreign minister on Sunday called for sanctions on Israel as European and Arab nations gathered in Madrid.
“Humanity’s open wound”
The talks aimed to stop Israel’s “inhumane” and “senseless” war in Gaza, Jose Manuel Albares told reporters before the meeting opened.
Humanitarian aid must enter Gaza “massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel”, he added, describing the territory as humanity’s “open wound,” AFP reported.
Spain also urged partners to impose an arms embargo on Israel and “not rule out any” individual sanctions against those “who want to ruin the two-state solution forever”, he added.
The fresh condemnation came after Gaza rescuers said 22 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli air strikes across the Palestinian territory on Sunday.
Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said seven people were killed in a strike on a home in Jabalia, in the north.
Some people were still under the debris, he added, as “the civil defence does not have search equipment or heavy equipment to lift the rubble to rescue the wounded and recover the martyrs”.
Two more Palestinians, including a woman who was seven months pregnant, were killed in an attack targeting tents sheltering displaced Palestinians around Nuseirat in central Gaza, he said, adding that doctors were unable to save the unborn child.
Also included in the toll were the civil defence’s director of operations Ashraf Abu Nar and his wife, according to Bassal.
Nine children of doctor couple
Fatal Israeli strikes were also recorded around Deir el-Balah in the centre of the territory, Beit Lahia in the north, and the main southern city of Khan Yunis.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Saturday that an Israeli strike in the southern city of Khan Yunis killed nine children of a pair of married doctors.
DW cited agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal on Saturday as saying that civil defense “crews transported the bodies of nine child martyrs, some of them charred, from the home of Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar and his wife, Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, all of whom were their children.”
The World Food Programme has called on Israel “to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster”, saying: “Hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity.”
Gaza’s health ministry said Sunday that at least 3,785 people had been killed in the territory since a ceasefire collapsed on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,939, mostly civilians.
