The dead included people who had sought refuge in a school sheltering the displaced in Gaza City. Al-Falah school in the city's eastern Zeitoun neighbourhood was hit twice, minutes apart, according to officials at Al-Ahli Hospital.
Among the casualties were first responders. Five Palestinians were killed later on Wednesday morning, when a strike hit people gathered around a drinking water tank on the western side of Gaza City, the same hospital said.
Also in Gaza City, the Shifa Hospital said it received the body of a man killed in a strike on his apartment west of the city.
Israeli occupation forces also struck displaced people walking on al-Rashid Street, killing at least four Palestinians, including a mother and a child.
Strikes hit the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing a husband and wife, and the Bureij refugee camp, killing one man, according to the Al-Awda hospital. A strike also hit a tent in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah, seriously injuring two people, the hospital said.
Rising death toll
Earlier on Wednesday at the same hospital, dozens of people attended a funeral service for a Palestinian freelance journalist, Yahya Barzaq. He was killed on Tuesday along with five other people in an Israeli airstrike while working for Turkish broadcast outlet TRT in the central town of Deir al Balah.
The Israeli occupation army did not comment on Wednesday’s strikes in Gaza or Barzaq’s death.
More than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed in the region since the Israeli war on Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed more than 66,100 Palestinians and wounded nearly 170,000 others. Women and children make up the majority of the dead.
The International Committee of the Red Cross on Wednesday said that intensified military operations in Gaza City had forced it to temporarily suspend its activities there, warning that "tens of thousands... face harrowing humanitarian conditions".
It came days after medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had been forced to suspend its work there because of Israel's assault.
UN agencies and some aid organisations still operate in Gaza City.
Systematic forced displacement
Meanwhile, Israel's defence minister issued a fresh warning for Gaza City residents to flee south on Wednesday, as heavy bombardment in Gaza's largest urban centre.
"This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south," he posted on X, adding that those who remained would "be considered terrorists and terrorist supporters."
Fadel Al-Jadba, 26, said he would not leave Gaza City.
Forcibly displaced from one place to another like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, he said tanks were in the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood and that he "would not be surprised if they advance into Al-Rimal", where he was sheltering.
"We want a ceasefire at any cost because we are frustrated, exhausted, and find no one in the world standing with us."
The Palestinian resistance group Hamas m denounced the Israeli war minister threats, stressing that his words expose Tel Aviv’s “arrogance, contempt for the international community, and a blatant prelude to escalating war crimes against hundreds of thousands of civilians in the city, including women, children, and the elderly.”
In a press release on Wednesday, Hamas said Israel’s mounting massacres prove its leaders are committing “ethnic cleansing, systematic forced displacement, and war crimes carried out brutally and in full view of the world.”
Trump's peace proposal
On Wednesday, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Bader Abdelatty said Trump’s proposal for ending the nearly two-year war in Gaza requires more negotiations on certain elements, echoing remarks made by Qatar a day earlier.
Hamas has said it would study the plan, both within the group and with other Palestinian factions, before responding to the plan.
A Palestinian source close to Hamas's leaders told AFP that "no final decision" had been made and that "the movement will likely need two to three days".
"Hamas wants to amend some of the items such as the disarmament clause and the expulsion of Hamas," the source said.
They added that Hamas had informed mediators of the "need to provide international guarantees for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and guarantees that Israel will not violate a ceasefire through assassinations inside or outside Gaza".
The comments by Qatar and Egypt, two key mediators, appeared to reflect Arab countries’ discontent over the text of the 20-point plan that the White House put out after Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced they had agreed on it on Monday.
The plan, which has received wide international support, requires Hamas to release Israeli captives, leave power in Gaza and disarm in return for the release of Palestinians kidnapped by Israel from Gaza anlong with detainees in Israeli prisons and an end to fighting.
The plan stipulates the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the flow of humanitarian aid and promises reconstruction in Gaza, placing it and its more than 2 million Palestinians under international governance. However, it sets no path to Palestinian statehood.
After his meeting and presser with Trump, Netanyahu contradicted the plan and posted a video in Hebrew telling Israelis that the army will not withdraw from Gaza.
Trump told reporters on Tuesday that Hamas had "about three or four days" to accept his 20-point Gaza plan, later warning that the Islamist movement would "pay in hell" if it refused.
A source familiar with negotiations taking place in the Qatari capital Doha told AFP that "two opinions exist within Hamas".
"The first supports unconditional approval, as the priority is a ceasefire under Trump's guarantees, with mediators ensuring Israel implements the plan," the source said.
"The second has serious reservations regarding key clauses, rejecting disarmament and the expulsion of any Palestinian from Gaza. They favour conditional approval with clarifications reflecting Hamas's and the resistance factions' demands," the source added.
The Palestinian government in the occupied West Bank said earlier it welcomed the plan, as did the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
More roadblocks and a flotilla headed to Gaza
The Israeli army said that starting at midday Wednesday, it would only allow Palestinians to travel south along the only north-south route still open in the coastal strip — meaning, people fleeing the intensifying fighting in Gaza City can continue to head south, but they could not go north.
While the occupation army did not offer more details on the closure, the road carries great symbolism for Palestinians. Earlier this year, when Israel opened access to the north — Gaza's most heavily destroyed area — hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crowded it, seeing their return as an act of steadfastness and defiance.
Hundreds of thousands remain displaced across Gaza, and finding food is a daily struggle. On Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said intensifying warfare in Gaza City forced it to suspend its operations there and relocate staff to southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, a widely watched flotilla of activists carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid is sailing toward Gaza, in what organisers have described as the largest attempt to date to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the strip.
The activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla of about 50 vessels say they expect Israeli authorities to intercept them, as has happened in past flotilla attempts to reach Gaza. On Wednesday, they said two of the vessels were harassed by Israeli warships overnight, though it stopped short of intercepting them.
The core vessels set sail from Barcelona, Spain, on Sept. 1, and the flotilla could reach Gaza shores by Thursday, organisers said. Israeli authorities warned the boats would not be allowed to reach Gaza.
* This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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