Two Israeli strikes killed more than 20 people in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, including at a United Nations school turned shelter, according to local health officials, the latest in a string of recent bombardments that have hit U.N. buildings in the enclave.
Paramedics found at least five bodies and eight injured people at the former school in central Gaza, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, an emergency medical service. The building, in Nuseirat, was being used to shelter people displaced by the Israeli-Hamas war.
The Israeli military said it had been targeting militants operating inside the building. Hamas, it said, “systematically violates international law, exploiting civilian structures and the population as human shields.”
It was the sixth former U.N. school facility to be hit in 10 days, according to the main United Nations agency aiding Palestinian refugees in the area, UNRWA. Last Tuesday, at least 27 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike near the entrance to a school turned shelter on the outskirts of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, according to the local health authorities.
About 17 people were killed in a separate Israeli strike on Tuesday in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area west of Khan Younis that the Israeli military has designated as a “safer” zone, the Gazan Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said that its aircraft had been targeting an Islamic Jihad commander in Khan Younis, but did not say whether the strike had landed in the designated zone. It said it was looking into reports that civilians had been wounded in the strike.
In a statement, Hamas condemned the two Israeli attacks, and called the United States “a partner” in them because of its support of Israel.
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli aircraft have struck 37,000 targets in Gaza, the military said on Tuesday, offering an accounting of the strikes that have laid waste to wide swaths of the enclave. More than 38,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the Israeli military campaign, which is now in its 10th month, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
In a statement, the Israeli military said that since the war began, it has killed about half of the leadership of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades. In all, some 14,000 militants have been killed or captured, it said. The claims could not be independently confirmed.
Critics have accused Israel of labeling any adolescent or adult male killed in Gaza as a Hamas member.
Over the weekend, Israeli forces bombarded an area of Al-Mawasi with heavy munitions in an attempt to kill the Qassam leader, Mohammed Deif. Scores of Gazans were killed in the attack, but Mr. Deif’s fate remained unclear.
In a meeting with two top Israeli officials on Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken expressed “serious concerns” about the civilian death toll in Gaza, according to a State Department spokesman.
“We have seen civilian casualties come down from the high points of the conflict,” the spokesman, Matthew Miller, said. “But they still remain unacceptably high. We continue to see far too many civilians killed in this conflict.”
Critics of the Biden administration have said it undermines such statements of concern by continuing to supply Israel with weapons.
Last week, Israeli negotiators led by the chief of Mossad, the intelligence agency, traveled to Qatar for meetings on a possible cease-fire. Both Israel and Hamas have agreed to a framework hammered out by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
But American officials say they do not believe that a final deal will be reached until after Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visits Washington next week. Mr. Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he would not agree to any deal that did not require Hamas to cede control of Gaza.
“Hamas is feeling the pressure,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “They are feeling it because we are striking them, eliminating their senior commanders and thousands of terrorists.”
The C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, said in a closed-door gathering on Saturday that Hamas’s top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was under increased pressure from his military commanders to agree to a cease-fire and to the release of hostages seized on Oct. 7, according to a person briefed on his remarks.
Mr. Burns said the internal pressure on Mr. Sinwar had been building for the past two weeks, as Hamas commanders and ordinary Palestinians tire of the war. Mr. Sinwar is believed to be hiding in tunnels under Khan Younis.
The C.I.A. declined to discuss Mr. Burns’s comments, which were previously reported by CNN and were made at an annual conference of business leaders held in Sun Valley, Idaho, by Allen & Company, an investment bank.
This week, Israel also carried out what appeared to be a drone attack in Syria, near the border with Lebanon, that killed a businessman who had helped finance Syrian militant groups, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor. The businessman, Baraa’ al-Qaterjy, was driving between Beirut and Damascus when his vehicle was hit, the observatory said.
Nader Ibrahim contributed reporting.
