GAZA: At least 40 people were killed in a Zionist strike Thursday on a UN-run school in the Nuseirat area of central Gaza. The raid came after US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators resumed talks aimed at securing a truce and hostage-prisoner swap in the nearly eight-month war. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, near Nuseirat, said it had received the bodies of at least 37 martyrs from the strike.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, the director of the Hamas-run government media office, rejected the Zionist entity’s assertion that the UN school had hidden a Hamas command post. “The occupation uses ... false fabricated stories to justify the brutal crime it conducted against dozens of displaced people,” Thawabta told Reuters. Thawabta and a medical source said 40 had been killed, including 14 children and nine women.

As people at the school cleared rubble from bloodstained classrooms, survivor Huda Abu Dhaher described waking up to the sound of rockets. “People’s remains were scattered inside the yard and outside. The gas canister exploded,” she told Reuters. “My nephew was martyred, he lost his leg and arm, he was a 10-year-old ... This woman’s leg got a fragment in it, her son bled from his mouth and leg, her mother-in-law sustained three injuries.”

The school, run by the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, was sheltering 6,000 displaced people at the time, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said. “At least 35 people were killed and many more injured,” he wrote on X. “Claims that armed groups may have been inside the shelter are shocking. We are however unable to verify these claims. Attacking, targeting or using UN buildings for military purposes are a blatant disregard of International Humanitarian law.”

An AFP photographer saw Palestinians removing blood-stained mattresses and examining damage to the school where displaced Gazans had been sheltering, parts of it littered with broken concrete slabs. Faisal Thari, a displaced Gazan who had sought refuge in the school, told AFP: “Why? What have we done for them to bomb us? We’ve fled from place to place. There is no safe place. No UNRWA school is safe. No tent is safe. There is no safe place.”

Hamas in a statement decried a “new crime... against our people”, urging international pressure on the Zionist entity to stop “these brutal massacres”. The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for the strike to be “independently investigated”.

A medic at the hospital said another Zionist predawn strike killed six people in a house in Nuseirat refugee camp, while witnesses reported intense shelling in the Bureij and Al-Maghazi camps in the same area. Zionist warplanes also carried out strikes in parts of Rafah, a source in Gaza’s southernmost city told AFP.

Kuwait’s ministry of foreign affairs strongly condemned a provocative march led by the Zionist occupation’s government, Knesset members and a number of settlers in Jerusalem, violating the sanctity of the Holy Mosque and assaulting Palestinians. In a statement on Thursday, the ministry denounced such a horrendous act that undermines the two-state solution and promotes a culture of hatred and violence. (See Page 2)

In another development, the Zionist military reported a rare attack near the Gaza border, saying a squad of Palestinian fighters killed a soldier and three of them were killed in return fire. A statement by Hamas armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said its fighters had conducted an operation behind enemy lines in the Rafah area of southern Gaza. The Zionist military offensive has killed at least 36,654 people in Gaza, mostly women and children.

As the fighting has raged on, the Zionist entity has faced growing diplomatic isolation, with international court cases accusing it of war crimes and several European countries recognizing a Palestinian state. Spain, which last week sparked Zionist fury by formally recognizing Palestinian statehood, said Thursday it would become the latest country to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing the Zionist entity of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Madrid’s “sole goal is to put an end to the war and to advance” a two-state solution to the conflict.

Albares, asked if he felt the Zionist entity’s actions in Gaza amounted to genocide, said it was up to the court to decide. “At the moment we see a large-scale war that does not distinguish between civilian and military targets in Gaza, as well as the enormous risk of regional spillover,” he added. Several Latin American nations, including Colombia and Mexico, have already joined South Africa’s proceedings before the court. Until now, however, no European country has taken that step. Ireland has also indicated it plans to join the case.

“It is urgent that we all support the court so that precautionary measures aimed at stopping any military operation are respected,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said at an economic forum. “And it is essential that we all strengthen the United Nations, supporting the role of the court as the highest judicial organ of a rules-based international system. Have no doubt: Spain will stand on the right side of history.”

US President Joe Biden last week outlined what he called a three-phase Zionist plan to halt the fighting for six weeks while captives are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Zionist jails and the delivery of aid into Gaza is stepped up. Major sticking points remain, however, with Hamas insisting on a permanent truce and full Zionist withdrawal — demands the Zionist entity has rejected. Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera news quoted a high-level source on Thursday saying that Cairo had “received positive signs from the Palestinian movement signaling its aspiration for a ceasefire”.

Meanwhile, the White House’s Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk met Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry in Cairo where the two discussed the talks. Hamas has accused the Zionist entity of dragging its feet in the negotiations, and leader Ismail Haniyeh said the Islamist movement would “deal seriously and positively” with any offer meeting its key demands.

The Zionist military on Thursday announced a soldier was killed in a Hezbollah drone strike the day before on the town of Hurfeish. Zionist politicians have threatened more intense fighting against Hezbollah, which last fought a major war with the Zionist entity in 2006.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said the Zionist entity was “prepared for a very intense operation” along the border with Lebanon and that “one way or another, we will restore security to the north”. The United States appeared to warn the Zionist entity against acting, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller saying any “escalation” in Lebanon would “greatly harm (the Zionist entity’s) overall security”.