Several Gazans killed in strikes as IDF appears to zero in again on northern Strip
Army says it bombed school-turned-shelter being used as Hamas command center for second time in days; report suggests fighters regrouping faster than Israel can stamp them out
Airstrikes across Gaza killed 18 Palestinians, officials in the Hamas-run enclave said Monday, as Israel’s military said it bombed a command center in a school, accusing the group of hiding behind civilians sheltering from the war.
With hopes fading for a ceasefire deal that would free Israeli hostages held in Gaza and pause the war after over 11 months, a senior Hamas official boasted that the organization was far from depleted and an Israeli report suggested the army was struggling to keep fighters in the Strip from regrouping.
A medic at Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza said 10 people were killed and 15 were injured when an airstrike hit a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, citing bodies brought to the hospital. Hospital records show that the dead included a mother, her child and her five siblings.
The Hamas-controlled civil defense agency said another six Palestinians were killed in an airstrike during the night on a house in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, an area that has seen several rounds of fighting.
Two more people were killed in an overnight airstrike on a house in Rafah, the agency said, and Hamas authorities later raised the death toll since fighting began to 41,226, an increase of 20 dead over the previous day.
The figures could not be confirmed, and Gazan health authorities do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The Israel Defense Forces did not comment on the reports, but says it only targets terror operatives and accuses Hamas and other armed groups of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas.
On Sunday, the IDF said it carried out an airstrike against a group of Hamas operatives at a command room embedded within a former school in the northern Gaza Strip.
The Ghazi Al-Shawa School in Beit Hanoun serves as a shelter for displaced Gazans, according to Palestinian media.
But the Israeli army said Hamas had commandeered part of the school to use as a hideout. It accused the terror group of using the school to prepare rocket attacks in recent weeks.
The army said it took steps to mitigate civilian harm in the strike, accusing Hamas of “systematically” using civilian sites for terror.
On Saturday, the IDF said it targeted a group of Hamas operatives using a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City as a command center, the IDF said. Gazan authorities said the strike killed five people, including a woman and two children.
It also ordered civilians to evacuate the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya Saturday, after rockets were launched from the area at Ashkelon earlier in the day, in a further sign of intensifying fighting in northern Gaza.
On Monday the army said it was deploying its 5th Brigade to the Netzarim Corridor area in the central Gaza Strip, several months after moving the unit out of the Strip.
The reserve infantry brigade is slated to help expand the Israel-controlled belt used to regulate access between the northern and southern parts of the Strip, among other operations, the army said.
Despite attempts to keep Hamas fighters in southern Gaza from returning north, a report by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster on Sunday claimed that Hamas was recovering in northern Gaza faster than the IDF was able to dismantle the terror group’s military capabilities.
Israel declared the northern part of the Strip largely cleared of organized Hamas units after months of heavy fighting in the initial stage of the war, but has repeatedly needed to return to the area since as Hamas-led fighters have regrouped.
The report, which was not attributed to a source, suggested that Hamas fighters in northern Gaza had used a prolonged troop absence to reorganize and prepare for a new stage of fighting.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official based in Istanbul, claimed Sunday that the terror group had ample resources to continue fighting Israel despite losses sustained over more than 11 months of war in Gaza.
“The resistance has a high ability to continue,” Hamdan told AFP. “There were martyrs and there were sacrifices… but in return, there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.”
Israel says it has killed 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel since the war broke out with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.
Some 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the unprecedented assault, and another 251 were taken hostage.
It is believed that 97 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Hamdan also accused the United States of not doing enough to force concessions from Israel that could lead to a truce in the war in Gaza.
“The American administration does not exert sufficient or appropriate pressure on the Israeli side,” says Hamdan. “Rather it is trying to justify the Israeli side’s evasion of any commitment.”
Speaking at the annual Haaretz Security Conference Monday, US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew said Israel had signaled a willingness to be flexible, while Hamas’s positions were less clear.
“We don’t know what Hamas is willing to accept,” he said.
He added that the US and fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar — along with Israel — were trying “to bring together as close as we can one position in the end so we can force a decision by Hamas.”
