Israeli strikes kill at least 100 Palestinians, including 27 at a school, health officials say

Hamas condemned the strike on the school, calling it a “ heinous massacre” of innocent civilians.

In Syria, meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes reportedly killed at least nine people in the southwest of the country on Thursday, as Israel accused Turkey of trying to build a “protectorate” in Syria. Syrian state news agency SANA said that those who died in the strikes were civilians, without giving details. Britain-based war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that they were armed residents from the Daraa province.

Israel had also struck five cities in Syria late Wednesday, including more than a dozen strikes near a strategic air base in the city of Hama, where Turkey, a key ally of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, reportedly has interests in having a military presence.

The Israeli military on Thursday ordered more residents in parts of northern Gaza to move west and south to shelters, warning that it planned to “work with extreme force in your area.” A number of the Palestinians leaving the targeted areas did so on foot, with some carrying their belongings on their backs and others using donkey carts.

“My wife and I have been walking for three hours covering only one kilometer,” said Mohammad Ermana, 72. The couple, clasping hands, each walked with a cane. “I’m searching for shelters every hour now, not every day,” he said.

Israel has issued sweeping evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza ahead of expected ground operations. The United Nations humanitarian office said around 280,000 Palestinians have been displaced since Israel ended the ceasefire with Hamas last month.

The fresh evacuation orders came a day after senior government officials said Israel said it would seize large parts of the Palestinian territory and establish a new security corridor across it. To pressure Hamas, Israel has imposed a month-long blockade on food, fuel, and humanitarian aid that has left civilians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle — a tactic that rights groups say is a war crime.

Hamas says it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for the release of more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire, and an Israeli pullout from Gaza. The group has rejected demands that it lay down its arms or leave the territory.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, officials said the bodies of 14 people had been taken to Nasser Hospital– nine of them from the same family. The dead included five children and four women. The bodies of another 19 people, including five children aged between 1 and 7 years and a pregnant woman, were taken to the European hospital near Khan Younis, hospital officials said. In Gaza City, 21 bodies were taken to Ahli hospital, including those of seven children.

Later in the day, strikes killed four more people in Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital, and another two people were killed in central Gaza and taken to Al Aqsa Hospital.

The attacks came as the Israeli military promised an independent investigation of a March 23 operation in which its forces opened fire on ambulances in southern Gaza. UN officials say 15 Palestinian medics and emergency responders were killed, and their bodies and ambulances were buried by Israeli soldiers in a mass grave.

The military initially said the ambulances were operating suspiciously and that nine militants were killed. The military said the probe would be led by an expert fact-finding body, “responsible for examining exceptional incidents” during the war. Rights groups say such investigations are often lacking and that soldiers are rarely punished.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk, citing the ambulance attack, warned Thursday that there is “a high and increasing risk” Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza.

By preventing aid from reaching Palestinians, Israel’s blockade “may also amount to the use of starvation as a method of war,” said Türk, urging countries that observe the UN‘s convention against genocide to take action.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel was establishing a new security corridor across Gaza to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory.

Israel has also reasserted control over the Netzarim corridor, a military zone that separates the northern third of Gaza from the rest of the narrow strip. Both that and another corridor, along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, run from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea.

Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel plans to maintain overall security control of Gaza after the war, and implement President Trump’s proposal to resettle much of its population elsewhere through what the Israeli leader referred to as “voluntary emigration.”

Palestinians have rejected the proposal, viewing it as expulsion from their homeland after Israel’s offensive left much of it uninhabitable, and human rights experts say implementing the plan would likely violate international law.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say whether those killed are civilians or combatants, but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war has left vast areas of Gaza in ruins and, at its height, displaced around 90 percent of the population.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, most of whom have since been released in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Israel rescued eight living hostages and has recovered dozens of bodies.