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PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD Abbas has urged Hamas to free all hostages, saying their captivity provided Israel with “excuses” to attack Gaza, as rescuers recovered charred bodies from an Israeli strike.
Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people across the besieged territory, including 11 in a strike on a school-turned-shelter. The dead included women and children.
“The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said, describing the attack on Yaffa school in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffa neighbourhood.
Several bodies, wrapped in white shrouds, were laid at the morgue of Al-Shifa hospital, an AFP journalist reported. The wounded were also being treated at the facility.
At the hospital, women were seen weeping over the body of a child wrapped in a white shroud.
Grieving relatives carried the bodies of their loved ones for burial, including those of children while women wept nearby.
“We want nothing more than for the war to end, so we can live like people in the rest of the world,” said Walid al-Najjar, a resident of Khan Yunis after a strike in the area.
We are a people who are poor, devastated – our lives are lost.
Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on 18 March, breaking the ceasefire that had largely paused hostilities and resulted in the release of 33 hostages from Gaza, who were taken on 7 Octobre 2023.
It also saw the release of approximately 1,800 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, many of whom were children.
Israel routinely detains children and prosecutes them in military courts, a practice long-condemned by human rights organisations and the United Nations. The most common charge is for throwing stones, which can carry a 20-year sentence.
Talks aimed at reaching a new ceasefire have so far failed to produce any breakthroughs, and a Hamas delegation is currently in Cairo for renewed negotiations with Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
“Hamas has given the criminal occupation excuses to commit its crimes in the Gaza Strip, the most prominent being the holding of hostages,” Abbas said in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“I’m the one paying the price, our people are paying the price, not Israel. My brother, just hand them over.
“Every day there are deaths. Why? Because they (Hamas) refuse to hand over the American hostage,” Abbas said of Edan Alexander, who was reportedly on a list of hostages Israel had asked to be freed in a proposal that was recently rejected by Hamas.
“You sons of dogs, hand over what you have and get us out of this” ordeal, he added, levelling a harsh Arabic epithet at Hamas.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim called Abbas’s remarks “insulting”.
“Abbas repeatedly and suspiciously lays the blame for the crimes of the occupation and its ongoing aggression on our people,” he said.
Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades later issued footage it said was of an Israeli hostage alive in a Gaza tunnel. He identified himself as 48-year-old Omri Miran.
Ties between Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas have been tense, with deep political and ideological divisions for nearly two decades.
Abbas and the PA have often accused Hamas of undermining Palestinian unity, while Hamas has criticised the former for collaborating with Israel and cracking down on dissent in the West Bank.
Since October 2023, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans have sought refuge in schools to escape the violence.
Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began.
“We lack the necessary tools and equipment to carry out effective rescue operations or recover the bodies of martyrs,” Bassal said.
Yesterday, the Israeli military stated that it had targeted approximately 40 “engineering vehicles”, alleging they were being used for “terror purposes”.
Bassal said air strikes destroyed bulldozers and other equipment needed to “clear debris and recover the bodies of martyrs from beneath the rubble”, as well as to “save lives, pull people from the rubble”.
Elsewhere in Gaza, additional fatalities were reported on Wednesday, including four people killed in Israeli shelling of homes in eastern Gaza City, according to Bassal.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the latest strikes.
Since Israel’s military campaign resumed, at least 1,890 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the total death toll since the war erupted to at least 51,266, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 that ignited the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel began blocking all deliveries of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to Gaza on 2 March
Germany, France, and Britain today called on Israel to allow aid into the besieged territory, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death”.
“This must end,” their foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
“We urge Israel to immediately restart a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians.”
The UN also warned that many community kitchens that are providing food for displaced people are also shutting due to depleting stocks.
“Due to a lack of cooking gas, families are resorting to burning plastic to cook their meals,” the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said on Tuesday.
“There are modest quantities (of fuel) available in Rafah and the north of Gaza, but they cannot be accessed due to displacement orders and location in the ‘no-go’ zones” drawn by the military.
The Israeli military says it is in control of 30% of Gaza, but AFP calculations based on maps given by the military show Israeli forces controlling more than 50% of the territory.
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