By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) – Israeli strikes killed at least 20 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, local health workers said, as the Israeli military unleashed more bombardments of the enclave and ordered residents to evacuate combat zones.
The United Nations said a foreign staffer was killed and five other workers were wounded in an Israeli airstrike on the site of a U.N. headquarters in central Gaza City.
Jorge Moreira da Silva, Executive Director of the U.N. office for Project Services, said: “Israel knew that this was a U.N. premises, that people were living, staying and working there, it is a compound. It is a very well-known place.
An explosive device was dropped or fired on the premises, he told a press conference in Brussels.
“This was not an accident,” he said. “What’s happening in Gaza is unconscionable.”
The Israeli military denied it had struck the U.N. compound in Deir al-Balah. It said it had hit a Hamas site in northern Gaza where it had detected preparations for firing into Israeli territory.
The renewed bloodshed followed one of the deadliest days so so far in the Israeli assault on the Palestinian territory, with
Israeli airstrikes killing more than 400 people on Tuesday, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The fighting ended weeks of relative calm since a ceasefire in January largely paused the war between Israeli forces and Hamas and other militants. Israel said the onslaught was “just the beginning”.
Israel and Hamas accuse each other of breaching the truce, which had offered a respite for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents after 17 months of war that has reduced the enclave to rubble and forced most of its population to evacuate multiple times.
The Israeli campaign has killed more than 49,000 people in Gaza, Palestinian health authorities say, and caused a humanitarian crisis with shortages of food, fuel and water.
Israel has accused Hamas of using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Hamas denies this and accuses Israel of indiscriminate bombings.
The war – the most devastating episode in decades of Israel- Palestinian conflict – was triggered by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which gunmen killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel has vowed to wipe out the Islamist group, which ruled over Gaza before the war and still holds sway.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to resume bombardments has triggered protests in Israel as 59 hostages are still being held in Gaza, with 24 of them believed to be still alive.
A coalition of hostage families and protesters against Netanyahu’s moves against the judiciary and other parts of the security establishment has regrouped and accuses the prime minister of using the war for political ends.
On Wednesday, the Israeli army dropped leaflets in the northern and southern Gaza Strip, ordering residents to evacuate their homes, warning they were in “dangerous combat zones”.
“Staying in the shelters or the current tent puts your lives and that of your family members in danger, evacuate immediately,” read a leaflet dropped on Beit Hanoun.
Netanyahu said on Tuesday he had ordered strikes because Hamas had rejected proposals to secure an extension of the ceasefire until April.
Hamas accused Israel of jeopardising efforts by mediators to negotiate a permanent deal to end the fighting.
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Wednesday she told Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar that the situation in Gaza is “unacceptable”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah called for the ceasefire to be restored and for aid flows to resume.
“Israel’s resumption of attacks on Gaza is an extremely dangerous step that adds further devastation to an already dire humanitarian situation,” he said on a visit to Paris for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron.
ARAB PLAN IN JEOPARDY
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Wednesday called for restraint from all sides ahead of her trip to Lebanon to discuss the conflict.
“The resumption of fighting … jeopardises the positive efforts of the Arab states, which together want to pursue a peaceful path for Gaza, free from Hamas,” Baerbock said in a statement.
Israel and Western powers do not want Hamas to play any role in the enclave when the war is over.
Arab nations drew up a plan for peace and reconstruction in Gaza after a proposal from U.S. President Donald Trump to resettle Palestinians and turn it into the “Riviera” of the Middle East triggered outrage in the region. However, the plan has not gained traction.
In Wednesday’s violence, three people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City, while another airstrike left two men dead and wounded six others in Beit Hanoun town in the north, the Gaza health officials said.
Palestinian medics said Israeli tank shelling on the Salahdeen road killed one Palestinian and wounded others, while an Israeli airstrike killed three people in a house in Beit Lahiya town north of the enclave.
(This story has been refiled to fix a typo in paragraph 1)
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo. Additional reporting by Jana Choukeir in Dubai, Lili Bayer in Brussels, Rachel More in Berlin and James Mackenzie in Jerusalem; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Angus MacSwan)
