May 26 (UPI) — Dozens of Palestinians were killed overnight by further Israeli air strikes on the war-torn enclave amid a breakdown in a new cease-fire agreement.
An estimated 54 Palestinians sheltering at Fahmi Al-Jargawi School in Gaza City have been killed by airstrikes carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces, the BBC reported Monday.
The scores of dead refugees included children from Beit Lahia after fires were seen engulfing two classrooms fixed as living quarters in the school, which was housing hundreds of people, according to the Hamas-run civil defense authority.
At least 35 were reported to be killed when the school was hit.
Video footage depicted fire engulfing parts of the school and graphic images of severely burned victims, including kids.
On Monday morning, the IDF said it hit 200 “terrorist organizations” across the Gaza Strip in 28 hours as military ops carried on.
The IDF claimed it targeted a “Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control center” in an area used by “terrorists” to presumably “plan” attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops, accusing Hamas of using the Gaza population “as human shields.”
Meanwhile, a senior Hamas official told the BBC that the terror syndicate agreed to the latest cease-fire deal.
The proposal permitted the release in two phases of 10 Israel hostages in exchange for a 70-day truce, a gradual withdrawal of IDF troops out of the territory and release of an undetermined number of Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas further demanded the entrance of 1,000 humanitarian aid trucks a day to aid the ailing population in Gaza.
However, a senior Israeli official said Monday that it had rejected the cease-fire proposal after reports that Israel had agreed to it in principle.
“The proposal received by Israel cannot be accepted by any responsible government,” the official told The Times of Israel without providing further detail, claiming that Hamas was setting “impossible conditions that mean a complete failure to meet the war goals, and an inability to release the hostages.”
On Sunday, IDF officials claimed that since its war began, Israel has “facilitated” the entry of over 1.7 million tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
On Monday, Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories office — a unit of its Ministry of Defense — claimed that 107 humanitarian aid trucks transporting flour and food were transferred into Gaza “following inspection” via the Kerem Shalom Crossing.
But according to international human rights organizations, Gaza is at a “breaking point” while the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification has warned of imminent famine on top of reputable accusations of genocide by Israel against Palestinians.
Nearly 54,000 people, including at least 16,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its invasion, according to the territory’s health ministry.
