At least 54 Palestinians have been killed – most of them in a school building sheltering displaced families – during Israeli air strikes on Gaza overnight, hospital directors have told the BBC.
Fahmi Al-Jargawi School in Gaza City was housing hundreds of people from Beit Lahia, currently under intense Israeli military assault. At least 35 were reported to have been killed when the school was hit.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence said multiple bodies, including those of children, were recovered – many severely burned, after fires engulfed two classrooms serving as living quarters.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had targeted “a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre” there.
The IDF said the area was being used “by the terrorists to plan… attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops”, and accused Hamas of using “the Gazan population as human shields”.
Video footage shared online showed large fires consuming parts of the school, with graphic images of severely burned victims, including children, and survivors suffering critical injuries.
Faris Afana, Northern Gaza ambulance service manager, said he arrived at the scene with crews to find three classrooms ablaze.
“There were sleeping children and women in those classrooms,” he said. “Some of them were screaming but we couldn’t rescue them due to the fires.
“I cannot describe what we saw due to how horrific it was.”
Local reports said the head of investigations for the Hamas police in northern Gaza, Mohammad Al-Kasih, was among the dead, along with his wife and children.
Separately, a strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed 19 people, according to the director of al-Ahli hospital Dr Fadel el-Naim. The Israeli military has not yet commented on what was being targeted.
The twin attacks are part of a broader Israeli offensive that has escalated in the northern part of the enclave over the past week.
The IDF said it hit 200 targets across Gaza in 48 hours as it continued its operations against what it called “terrorist organisations”.
Meanwhile, a senior Hamas official told the BBC on Monday that the group had agreed to the latest ceasefire proposal offered by US special envoy Steve Witkoff.
However, Witkoff told Reuters that what he had seen was “completely unacceptable” and that the proposal being discussed was not the same as his.
A Palestinian official familiar with the talks said the plan agreed to by Hamas includes the release of 10 Israeli hostages held by the group in two phases.
In exchange, there would be a 70-day truce, a gradual partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the release of an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners, including several hundred serving long or life sentences.
The BBC has approached the Israeli government for comment on the proposal. Israeli media quoted anonymous Israeli officials as saying the plan would be rejected.
As mediation efforts continued, an Israeli strike on the home of a Palestinian doctor in Gaza killed nine of her 10 children on Friday. Dr Alaa al-Najjar’s 11-year-old son was injured, along with her husband, Hamdi al-Najjar, who is in critical condition.
The nine children – Yahya, Rakan, Raslan, Gebran, Eve, Rival, Sayden, Luqman and Sidra – were aged between just a few months old and 12. The Israeli military has said the incident is under review.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said two of its staff were killed in a strike on their home in Khan Younis the following day.
The killing of Ibrahim Eid, a weapon contamination officer, and Ahmad Abu Hilal, a security guard at the Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah “points to the intolerable civilian death toll in Gaza”, the ICRC said, repeating its call for a ceasefire.
On Sunday, the head of a controversial US and Israeli-approved organisation planning to use private firms to deliver aid to Gaza resigned.
In a statement by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), executive director Jake Wood said it had become apparent that plans to set up distribution hubs would not meet the “humanitarian principles” of independence and neutrality.
The UN and various humanitarian organisations have said they will not co-operate with the GHF, accusing it of being discriminatory over who will receive food.
Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza on 2 March that lasted 11 weeks before it allowed limited aid to enter the territory in the face of warnings of famine and mounting international outrage.
The Israeli military body responsible for humanitarian affairs in Gaza, Cogat, said 107 lorries carrying aid were allowed into Gaza on Sunday. The UN says much more aid – between 500 to 600 lorries a day – is needed.
