People search through debris in the yard of a school run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, in the Shati camp for Palestinian refugees west of Gaza City, in the aftermath of an overnight Israeli bombardment on June 25.Israeli forces killed at least 24 Palestinians in three separate air strikes early on Tuesday on Gaza City and the dead included a sister of Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of the militant Islamist Hamas group, Gaza health officials and medics said.
The house in Shati belonged to the extended family of Hamas political chief Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, killing one of his sisters along with other relatives too, family members and medics said. The Israeli Air Force struck two structures “used by Hamas terrorists in Shati and Daraj Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip. The terrorists operated inside school compounds that were used by Hamas as a shield for its terrorist activities”, the military statement said.The group described the attacks on the two schools and the house in Shati camp as “massacres”.
In nearby Khan Younis, medics said Israeli tank shelling had wounded several people at a tent camp in the west of the city., international mediation backed by the United States has so far failed to bring a ceasefire agreement. Hamas says any agreement must bring an end to the war, while Israel says it will agree only temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas is eradicated.
Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.