GAZA: UN experts demanded action on Wednesday to avert the “annihilation” of Palestinians in Gaza, as rescuers said Zionist strikes across the territory killed dozens of people. A planned expanded offensive revealed by the Zionist military has drawn international condemnation, after UN agencies previously warned of humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian territory already devastated by 19 months of war.

At least 59 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday in Zionist strikes in the Palestinian territory. Senior Hamas member Bassem Naim told AFP on Wednesday that “the scale and intensity of the bombing show a clear pattern – this is not just warfare, it’s a deliberate campaign of eradication”. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Wednesday at least 2,545 people have been killed since the Zionist entity resumed its campaign, bringing the war’s overall toll to 52,653.

More than 20 independent United Nations experts said the world faced a “stark decision” to “remain passive and witness the slaughter of innocents or take part in crafting a just resolution”. The experts implored the international community to avert the “moral abyss we are descending into”. The Zionist entity’s broader offensive, approved by the government amid a two-month aid blockade on Gaza, would include displacing “most” of its residents, the military has said.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called the situation in Gaza “the most critical we have ever seen”. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Madrid will present a draft resolution at the UN General Assembly aimed at “proposing urgent measures to stop the killing of innocent civilians and ensure humanitarian aid” in Gaza. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told parliament the situation in Gaza and the occupied West Bank was “increasingly intolerable”.

Gaza health authorities said at least 48 people were killed in Zionist airstrikes on a school that housed families displaced by the conflict and which was located close to a crowded market and restaurant in Gaza City. Medics said two strikes targeted the Karama School in Tuffah, a suburb of Gaza City, killing 15. Later in the day, a Zionist strike near a restaurant and market in in Al-Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City killed at least 33 people, including women and children, medics said.

Reuters footage of the scene near the market showed wounded men being rushed away on the back of pickups and carts. Ambulances sped down shattered streets and a woman in tears carried a baby away from the scene, with two young children beside her. “The blood was like a lake, oh my baby, pools of blood,” she screamed. Ahmed Al-Saoudi said he witnessed the airstrike near the market. “People come to the market to get what they need if they can find it ... Neither the people nor the animals were safe. Neither the young nor the old.”

An image posted on social media showed what appeared to be a family of three - mother, father and son - lying dead on the street in pools of blood. The young boy was carrying a pink backpack. The Gaza government’s media office said two local journalists, Nour Abdu and Yehya Sbeih, were killed in Wednesday’s attacks, raising the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Zionist fire since the war began to 214.

Two Zionist airstrikes on another school, housing displaced people in Bureij camp in central Gaza, killed at least 33 people, including women and children, on Tuesday, local health authorities said. The strike smashed classrooms, destroyed furniture and left a large crater in the school campus. On Wednesday, survivors sifted through rubble to look for some of their belongings. “What happened is an earthquake. The Israeli occupation hit a school housing children. They are children,” said eyewitness Ali Al-Shaqra. He said the school housed 300 families.

“Here is the building; it was razed to the ground. We cannot find the gas cylinder, the flour bag we had, the kilo of rice, or the meal we got from the Tukkiyah (community kitchen). Thank God we are left with the clothes we had on,” Shaqra added. In Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, near the border with Egypt, residents and Hamas sources said Zionist forces, who have taken control of the city, continued to blow up and demolish houses and buildings.

One strike hit a house in the southern city of Khan Yunis, killing eight Al-Qidra family members and wounding 12, Bassal said. The dead were aged between two and 54, he added. AFP footage from Khan Yunis’s Nasser Hospital showed wounded children crying on hospital beds while bodies covered in blankets arrived in ambulances. “They were sleeping and the house collapsed on them,” said Abir Shehab, adding her brother had been killed. “We die of hunger, we die of war, we die of fear, we die of everything, and the whole world stands by and watches us die,” she said.

Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, said on Wednesday their fighters had detonated a pre-planted minefield targeting a Zionist armored force east of Khan Yunis in the south. They said they inflicted casualties, followed by mortar shelling of the area.

On Wednesday Hamas reiterated its call for a “comprehensive” agreement to end the war. “Hamas and the resistance factions insist on reaching a comprehensive agreement and a full package to end the war and aggression, along with a roadmap for the day after,” political bureau member Bassem Naim told AFP Wednesday. “There are desperate attempts ahead of (US President Donald) Trump’s visit to the region... to force through a partial deal,” he said.

The foreign ministers of Spain, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway and Slovenia in a joint statement Wednesday said they “firmly reject any demographic or territorial change in Gaza”. UN rights chief Volker Turk voiced concerns that the Zionist entity’s plans to expand its offensive aim to create conditions threatening Palestinians’ “continued existence” in Gaza. He said they “will almost certainly cause further mass displacement, more deaths and injuries of innocent civilians”.

Rights group Amnesty International said the Zionist entity “must immediately abandon any plans for annexation in Gaza and mass forcible transfer of Palestinians,” which “would gravely violate international law”. “(The Zionist entity) has continued to commit genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreversible harm being inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza,” a statement said. – Agencies