• Dead include 15 kids, women killed in strike on school turned shelter
• Hamas warns Palestinians against aiding US-backed GHF
• UN expert calls on states to cut trade ties with Israel over ‘apocalyptic’ Gaza situation

GAZA CITY: Israeli forces killed at least 69 people on Thursday, including 15 in a strike on a school sheltering Palestinians displaced by the war nearing its 22nd month.

Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where its war has created dire humanitarian conditions and displaced nearly all of the territory’s population of more than two million. Many have sought shelter in school buildings, but these have repeatedly come under Israeli attacks.

In an updated toll on Thursday afternoon, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 69 people were killed by Israeli strikes, artillery or gunfire across the territory.

They included 38 people waiting for humanitarian aid at three separate locations in central and southern Gaza and a child killed by a drone in Jabalia in the north.

Bassal said 15 people, “the majority of them children and women”, were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.

At the Gaza City school compound hit on Thursday, AFP footage showed young children wandering through the charred, bombed out building, as piles of burnt debris smouldered.

Groups of Palestinians picked through the rubble and damaged furniture that littered the floor.

Bassal of the civil defence agency reported 25 people killed while seeking aid near the Netzarim area in central Gaza, six others at another location nearby and seven in Rafah, southern Gaza, with scores of people injured.

Across Gaza on Thursday, Bassal said, artillery shelling in the northern town of Beit Lahia killed three people. Further south, he said three people were killed in a strike that hit tents housing displaced people in the coastal Al-Mawasi area.

Since Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade on Gaza on May 19, the United Nations says more than 400 Palestinians have been killed while seeking handouts of aid.

Hamas’ warning

The Hamas-run interior ministry in Gaza on Thursday warned residents of the coastal enclave not to assist the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, saying deadly incidents near its food distribution sites endangered hungry Gazans.

“It is strictly forbidden to deal with, work for, or provide any form of assistance or cover to the American organization (GHF) or its local or foreign agents,” an interior ministry statement said.

“Legal action will be taken against anyone proven to be involved in cooperation with this organisation, including the imposition of the maximum penalties stipulated in the applicable national laws,” it added, without giving further details.

The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of deliveries which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral.

‘Genocidal campaign’

A UN expert on Thursday called on states to impose an arms embargo and cut off trade and financial ties with Israel, which she alleged is waging a “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.

In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese said that “the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is apocalyptic”.

“Israel is responsible for one of the cruellest genocides in modern history,” she added, in a speech that was met with a burst of applause from the Geneva council.

Albanese, one of dozens of independent UN-mandated experts to document abuses around the world, was presenting her latest report which named over 60 companies she said were involved in supporting Israeli settlements and military actions in Gaza.

“What I expose is not a list, it is a system, and that is to be addressed,” she told the council. “We must reverse the tide,” she added, calling for states to impose a full arms embargo, suspend all trade agreements and ensure companies face legal consequences for their involvement in violations of international law.

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2025