Warplanes strike Gaza refugee camp as Israel rejects call to suspend fighting

Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday, killing at least 38 people and injuring dozens of others, health officials said (Hatem Moussa/AP)

Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday, killing at least 38 people and injuring dozens of others, health officials said.

The attack came as Israel said it will press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite US appeals for a suspension of the fighting to get aid to desperate civilians.

The soaring death toll in Gaza has sparked growing international anger, with tens of thousands from Washington to Berlin taking to the streets on Saturday to demand an immediate ceasefire.

Israel has rejected the idea of halting its offensive, even for humanitarian reasons. Instead, it said Hamas is “encountering the full force” of its troops.

“Anyone in Gaza City is risking their life,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said.

Palestinians look for survivors of the Israeli bombardment in the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip (Hatem Moussa/AP)

Large columns of smoke rose as Israel’s military said it had encircled Gaza City, the initial target of its offensive.

Gaza’s Health Ministry has said more than 9,400 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war, and that number is likely to rise as the assault continues.

Air strikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza overnight, killing at least 38 people and injuring dozens of others, health ministry spokesman Medhat Abbas said on Sunday.

Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli air strike flattened several multistorey homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.

“It was a true massacre,” he said while standing on the wreckage of destroyed homes. “All here are peaceful people. I challenge anyone who says there were resistance (fighters) here.”

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Palestinian firefighters extinguish a blaze caused by an Israeli air strike in Gaza City (Abed Khaled/AP)

The camp, a built-up residential area, is located in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians in Gaza to seek refuge as it focuses its military offensive on the north.

Despite such appeals, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas fighters and assets everywhere and accusing it of using civilians as human shields.

Critics say Israel’s strikes are often disproportionate, considering the large number of women and children killed.

A separate strike on Sunday flattened a building near the al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service. The charity posted a video showing medical workers rushing a wounded man to the hospital as a woman and children ran behind them.

A Palestinian girl looks out of her home after the Israeli bombardment in the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Sunday (Hatem Moussa/AP)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Arab foreign ministers in Jordan on Saturday after talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insisted there can be no temporary ceasefire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Arab countries want an immediate ceasefire, saying “the whole region is sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come”.

However, Mr Blinken said “it is our view now that a ceasefire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on October 7″, when the group launched a wide-ranging attack from Gaza into southern Israel, triggering the conflict.

He said humanitarian pauses can be critical in protecting civilians, getting aid in and getting foreign nationals out, “while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective, the defeat of Hamas”.

Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told reporters in Beirut that Mr Blinken “should stop the aggression and should not come up with ideas that cannot be implemented”.

Palestinians look for survivors under the rubble of a destroyed house following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City (Abed Khaled/AP)

The spokesman for the Hamas military wing, who goes by Abu Obeida, said in a speech that fighters have destroyed 24 Israeli vehicles and inflicted casualties in the past two days.

Egyptian officials said they and Qatar were proposing humanitarian pauses for six to 12 hours daily to allow aid in and casualties to be evacuated.

They are also asking for Israel to release a number of women and elderly prisoners in exchange for hostages, suggestions Israel seemed unlikely to accept.

Israel has repeatedly demanded that northern Gaza’s 1.1 million residents flee south, and on Saturday it offered a three-hour window for residents to do so. An Associated Press journalist on the road, however, saw nobody going.

Israel asserted that Hamas “exploited” the window to move south and attack its forces.

There was no immediate Hamas comment on that claim, which was impossible to verify.

Israeli planes dropped leaflets urging people to head south during another window on Sunday from 10am to 2pm.

Swathes of residential neighbourhoods in northern Gaza have been flattened in air strikes.

Palestinians look for survivors in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli strike on Saturday (Hatem Moussa/AP)

UN monitors say more than half of northern Gaza’s remaining residents, estimated at around 300,000, are sheltering in UN -run facilities. But deadly Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit and damaged those shelters.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said it has lost contact with many in the north.

An Israeli air strike overnight struck a water well in Tal al-Zatar in northern Gaza, cutting off water for tens of thousands of people in the area, the Hamas-run municipality in the town of Beit Lahia said in a statement early on Sunday.

The UN said about 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70% of the population, have fled their homes. Food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities is running out.

The conflict has stoked tensions across the region, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group repeatedly trading fire along the border.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, at least two Palestinians were shot dead during an Israeli arrest raid in Abu Dis, just outside of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

At least 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war, mainly during violent protests and gun battles during arrest raids.

Palestinians carry the body of Musa Zaarur, draped in the Islamic Jihad militant group’s flag, during his funeral after he was shot during an Israeli raid in Abu Dis (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

Thousands of Israelis protested outside Mr Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem on Saturday, urging him to resign and calling for the return of roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas.

The prime minister has refused to take responsibility for the October 7 attack in southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people. Ongoing Palestinian rocket fire has forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes.

In another reflection of widespread anger in Israel, a junior government minister, Amihai Eliyahu, suggested in a radio interview on Sunday that Israel could drop an atomic bomb on Gaza but he later claimed the remarks were “metaphorical”.

Mr Netanyahu issued a statement saying the minister’s comments were “not based in reality” and that Israel would continue to try to avoid harming civilians.

Among the Palestinians killed in Gaza are more than 3,900 Palestinian children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown of civilians and fighters.

The Israeli military said four more soldiers have died during the Gaza ground operation, taking the confirmed death toll to 28.