An Israeli airstrike on Wednesday killed at least 18 people, Palestinian officials said, at a school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip that Israel said Hamas used as a command post, and a United Nations agency said six of the dead were its employees.
The attack in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, came as the Israeli military resumed the offensive on another front, launching a new round of deadly raids in the occupied West Bank.
The chief U.N. relief agency for Palestinians, known as UNRWA, said the strike on the Jaouni School building in Nuseirat was the deadliest single incident for its staff over the 11 months of a war that has killed more than 200 of its workers.
The Gaza Civil Defense emergency services said that those killed included women and children, and that in addition to 18 confirmed dead, a similar number were wounded, some of them critically. It said the strike was the fifth time the school, which housed displaced people, had been hit during the war.
Gaza’s schools have not held classes since the fighting began in October, and many school buildings have become shelters for people forced to flee their homes. Israel has increasingly been targeting such schools, with analysts saying that its military has largely destroyed Hamas’s network of tunnels, forcing more fighters above ground.
Since invading Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Israeli forces have also sharply increased the frequency and intensity of raids in the West Bank, saying that it is rooting out armed militants there, as well.
The military mounted raids and at least one airstrike overnight and into Wednesday in the cities of Tulkarm and Tubas in the northern West Bank, and other locations nearby, killing several people it described as terrorists. The actions came after a lull of a few days, following lengthy and destructive incursions into the same region.
Israel’s military said that its forces were carrying out an operation against militants, and that early Wednesday its aircraft had struck in Tubas “and eliminated a terrorist cell consisting of five terrorists armed with explosives who posed a threat” to Israeli forces. Palestinian officials also said that five people were killed, and Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reported that the dead were young men near a mosque.
Wafa also said that three other people were killed in another airstrike, on a car in Tulkarm. The Israeli military did not confirm that strike, but said that in Tulkarm it had killed at least one person and “located and dismantled an explosives laboratory.”
Since the start of the war, Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 650 people in the West Bank, including civilians, according to the United Nations. In that time, Israel has carried out 55 airstrikes in the West Bank, which previously were quite rare, the United Nations said.
On Wednesday, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both issued their first extensive remarks on the killing last week of an American woman, Aysenur Eygi, 26, who was in the West Bank to protest Israeli settlements. The Israeli military has acknowledged that one of its troops likely fired the fatal shot during a clash with demonstrators throwing rocks. Other protesters say that Ms. Eygi never took part in the violence, and that the shots were fired after the clash had ended.
Mr. Biden said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by the killing of Ms. Eygi and demanded “full accountability” from Israel for her death. Ms. Harris said the shooting “raises legitimate questions” about the conduct of Israeli military forces in the West Bank.
The new raids in Tulkarm, on the border with Israel, and Tubas, about 20 miles to the east, followed a series of destructive and lengthy incursions, a particularly intense 10-day campaign that killed at least 39 people, according to the Palestinian authorities, who do not separate civilians from combatants in their casualty counts.
Many Palestinians, especially in Tulkarm and the northern city of Jenin, were trapped in their homes for days while bulldozers ripped up streets in what the Israeli military said was an effort to unearth improvised explosives planted by armed groups.
In Tubas on Wednesday, Harith al-Hasani, a 33-year-old resident, said that Israeli forces had stormed the city during the early morning hours before “clashes erupted and we started hearing explosions.” Israeli aircraft and drones buzzed in the city’s skies, and soldiers also were “walking around on foot,” Mr. al-Hasani said.
“Usually they move around in their vehicles,” he said.
Mr. al-Hasani said that Israeli forces had closed roads with earthen barriers, and were interrogating young men in the streets and raiding people’s homes.
Wafa, the news agency, said that Israeli forces had closed all entrances to Tubas and were inspecting ambulances before allowing them to enter a local hospital.
The Israeli military said it could not immediately comment on the reports, but later said its troops had exchanged gunfire with militants in Tubas, arrested some of them and dismantled a car bomb.
Since Oct. 7, raids have been a near-daily reality for the nearly three million Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Israeli officials have described the raids as necessary to combat rising Palestinian militancy, particularly a spate of attempted bombings, over the past few weeks. Israeli officials have said that more than 150 attacks against Israelis have emanated from the Jenin and Tulkarm areas in the past year.
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