AT least eight people have been killed in an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza, as Israel sent several senior officials for talks on a potential ceasefire.
An Israeli attack on Saturday hit the Zainab al-Wazir school in northern Gaza’s Jabalia al-Balad area, killing eight civilians, including two women and two children, according to the Palestinian civil emergency service.
“The Israelis have targeted us without any prior warning,” a mother told Al Jazeera, as she searched through the debris. “They attacked us with a missile. I don’t know where our children are. I don’t know anything about them, whether they’re wounded or killed.”
Al Jazeera’s Moath al-Kahlout described the scenes at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, where dozens of the wounded were taken, as “bloody” and “dire”, noting the dearth of medical supplies under Israel’s ongoing siege of northern Gaza, which has been in place for more than 80 days.
Later on Saturday, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported strikes on various locations across Gaza, including an attack on a house in the Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City, which killed four Palestinians and wounded several others.
Israeli fighter jets also bombed a tent sheltering displaced families in Deir el-Balah, located in the centre of the enclave, killing three people, Wafa reported.
Additional strikes reportedly killed one person near the Bureij refugee camp, also in central Gaza, and another in the southern town of Khan Younis.
The intensified attacks came as Egypt, Qatar and the United States made renewed efforts to reach a deal to halt fighting in Gaza and free remaining Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
‘Tough sticking points’On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who had travelled to Qatar earlier in the week.
Witkoff had reassured Egyptian and Qatari mediators that the US would continue to work towards a fair deal to end the war soon, said Egyptian security sources cited by news agency Reuters.
After the meeting, Netanyahu dispatched a high-level delegation, including the head of the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, to Qatar in order to “advance” talks, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.
“There are a lot of moving parts here,” said Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from the Jordanian capital, Amman.
“Donald Trump said that he would be quite aggressive in trying to get a ceasefire if it didn’t happen before he took office … But you have to remember that there are tough sticking points on each side,” she said.