Israel’s armed forces are multiplying their strikes in the Gaza Strip, where five bombings, including one on a school where displaced people had taken refuge, killed at least 57 people, local authorities said, amid criticism from the US government over the mounting death toll. in the ranks of civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country’s military would “further increase the pressure on Hamas,” the Palestinian Islamist movement that launched an unprecedented attack on southern sectors of Israeli territory on October 7, triggering this war. which is now on its 285th day.

Hamas “is under increasing pressure because we are hitting them, eliminating their senior officials and thousands of terrorists. This is precisely the time to increase the pressure even more,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), shelling “from end to end of the Gaza Strip” resulted in “dozens of deaths and injuries” yesterday.

Shelling took place “a few tens of meters” from a United Nations center in Deir al-Bala, a community in the central part of the enclave where many displaced people are.

The State Department stressed yesterday Monday that the number of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip remains “unacceptable”.

Last night and in the early hours of this morning, Civil Protection in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip released new figures, saying 57 people were killed and “dozens” wounded in five Israeli bombardments.

The strikes took place near a gas station in Al Mawasi, near Khan Younis; a school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Nusheirat refugee camp; a roundabout in Beit Lahia; a house in Al Zawaida; and in a mosque in the camp also in Nuseirat camp, the Civil Protection listed.

The Israeli armed forces said in a statement that they targeted “terrorists using a UNRWA school in the Nusheirat sector” and a “company commander” of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement “in the western part of Khan Yunis.”

They said they had taken “measures” to reduce the risk of civilians being hit in the school bombing and accused Hamas, for the umpteenth time, of using civilians as human shields, which Hamas has steadfastly denied.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been displaced by the fighting, most repeatedly, during the war, now in its tenth month, according to the United Nations.

Many have taken refuge in public buildings, especially schools, as well as in courtyards and hospital outpatient clinics.

The war was sparked by an unprecedented incursion by Hamas’ military arm into southern Israel in October, which killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to a count based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped in the attack, 116 are still being held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but 42 of them are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli military.

In retaliation, the Israeli armed forces have since carried out large-scale military operations that have so far killed at least 38,713 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry as of yesterday.

Benjamin Netanyahu insists that he means to continue the war until the annihilation of Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, a movement labeled a terrorist organization by Israel, the US and the EU, and the release of all hostages.

Condemning the “massacres” of “unarmed civilians” by the Israeli army in the besieged Palestinian enclave, a leading figure in the Palestinian Islamist movement announced on Sunday night that it was suspending all participation in indirect negotiations aimed at declaring a ceasefire, clarifying that his faction is “ready” to return, when the other side shows “seriousness”.

On Saturday, Israeli shelling killed 92 people in the al-Mawashi sector, designated months ago as a safe “humanitarian zone” and where displaced Gazans were being urged to gather, in the southern part of the enclave. The Israeli military said it targeted Mohammed Daif and Rafa Salama, respectively the head of Hamas’s military wing and its head in Khan Younis, who are described as the “masterminds of the October 7 massacre”.

French diplomacy yesterday condemned “the bombings of the last few days”, which made “even heavier the devastating toll (of casualties) among the ranks of the civilian population”.

Non-governmental organizations, including Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World, denounced the “massacres” in supposed “safe zones”.

The bombings are “worsening the humanitarian disaster”, while NGOs continue to face “obstacles” raised “due to the continuation of military operations” by Israel, Doctors Without Borders insisted on Monday.

The seizure of the crossing point in Rafah, on the closed border of the Gaza Strip with Egypt, at the beginning of May, resulted in the “complete interruption” of humanitarian aid deliveries, the NGOs stressed, underlining that 50% of the households in the enclave is in a state of “emergency”, at risk of starvation, in the northern part of the small coastal area.

Israel blames the UN for problems in aid deliveries. For its part, the international organization constantly denounces the obstacles that the Israeli authorities interfere with the entry and distribution of fuel in the enclave, in particular fuel, absolutely necessary for the operation of the generators in the Gaza Strip, where the electricity supply has been cut since the first 24 hours of the war .

The UN underlines that in the last two weeks it has managed to distribute only about 80,000 liters of fuel per day in the enclave, when “400,000 liters per day are needed for the most fundamental humanitarian operations”.