Gaza Airstrike Kills 50+ Palestinians

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News Presenter
Welcome back. Let's return to our top story. More than 50 Palestinians have been killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes overnight, including a strike on a school that was sheltering displaced families. The twin attacks are part of a broader Israeli offensive in the north of the territory that has escalated over the past week amid growing international pressure on the Israelis to allow more aid into Gaza. Israel does not allow international media organizations, including the BBC, to report from Gaza. From Jerusalem, here's Yolanda Nell.

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Reporter
Little Wardah al-Sheikh Khalil made out alive, but her mother and two older siblings did not. The Classroom turned shelter turned inferno overnight. Israel's military says it attacked what it called key terrorists here in Gaza City and took steps to stop civilians getting hurt. But children were killed. It was horrific, says one displaced mother pulled from the rubble with her son.

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Mother
It was indescribable. Body parts, charred bodies, the smell of burning. I swear to God, our hearts have died. We're shaken. We're exhausted. Enough.

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Reporter
Those killed in their sleep were carried to their final resting places today. And the number of dead continued to rise. 17 members of one family reportedly killed in an Israeli strike in the north. As Israel's military steps up its offensive, the chief of staff says Hamas is under immense pressure. Israel plans to seize all of Gaza. A big supporter of that is its hardline minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, marking Israel's Jerusalem Day with a provocative visit to the city's most contested holy site.

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Minister Itamar Ben-Gavir
We held a prayer here for the well-being of the hostages, that they all return home safely and for victory in the war.

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Reporter
There's mass hunger in Gaza even after Israel eased its two-month-long total blockade last week. It wants aid delivery to be taken over by a new organisation. But its head has now resigned, saying the idea doesn't stick to humanitarian principles. Today, young Warda returned to the ruins of the bombed shelter in Gaza City, as yet unaware of her personal loss. Amid growing international criticism over the suffering caused by this war, her trauma will only deepen.

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News Presenter
And we can now join Yolande live in Jerusalem. Let's focus a bit firstly then, Yolande, on aid. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, it's controversial, it's backed by the US and by Israel, but it's so complicated getting aid in. And they say they've started to begin their work there. How much do we know about what they're doing and how they're going to move around, how they plan to distribute aid?

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Reporter
Well, first of all, remember that aid is still in dangerously short supply across the entire Gaza Strip, despite the fact that Israel did begin to ease slightly its total blockade that has gone on for 11 weeks, just one week ago. Now, we had a statement from this newly created Gaza Humanitarian Foundation early in the day, saying that its trucks were loaded and ready to go. It planned in the next week to reach one million Palestinians. That's half of the population of the strip. It's supposed to be working out of this handful of distribution sites, really concentrated in the south. And its work will involve using armed security contractors and having Gazans, one one representative each family who's been specially screened crossing israeli military lines had to pick up supplies of food for their family on-site it's the place a lot of them then uh...

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Reporter
several days You know, it's been already sort of dismissed by the UN and other aid agencies that have been working in Gaza as being unethical and unworkable. Remember that they operate or have been operating out of something like 400 distribution points. And then just underscoring all the confusion that there is around this newly created organization, we had the executive director, Jake Wood, he's a former US Marine turned social entrepreneur, announcing his resignation. And he said that that was because the plan could not adhere to humanitarian principles, neutrality, impartiality, independence, similar to the criticisms that we've been having from the UN. But still, you know, Israel says that it wants to change the way that aid is distributed in Gaza, claims that significant amount of supplies have been diverted to Hamas, something that Hamas denies with the UN and others saying that they have had strong supervision mechanisms to make sure that doesn't happen.

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News Presenter
And on the ground, Yolande, we're hearing at least 54 Palestinians were killed overnight and then in the past hour or so, reports that another evacuation order has been issued for Khan Yunus. Where will people go?

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Reporter
That's right. People have been told to leave Khan Yunis, in particular to head westwards towards this Al-Mu'asi area along the coast. This is after three rockets were fired from southern Gaza earlier in the day, the Israeli military says, with two of those actually landing inside the strip and one of them intercepted. And, you know, already people in Chez Yunis have been fleeing, making that journey. And there is now this plan which is causing a lot of worry being reported in the Israeli media, with the army said to be planning over the next two months to take 75% of the Gaza Strip and move the two million people of Gaza into three areas, one in the south, one in the centre and one in the heart of Gaza City.

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News Presenter
Yolande, as we're speaking, I'm also just monitoring the news wires and we're getting some alerts from Palestinian sources who are talking about a new ceasefire deal. What are they referencing there? Do you know? What are the developments on that front?

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Reporter
I mean, there have been some reports that we've not had confirmed to us of a back channel between Hamas and the Trump administration proposing a 70-day ceasefire for the return of Ten of the hostages that Hamas is still holding. Of course, it's believed that at least 20 of the hostiges are still alive, being held inside Gaza. But this is very unclear, the picture that's gone at the moment. There's certainly not been any confirmation that this is something realistic from the Israeli side. We did hear as well that there were some talks that were scheduled to happen in Cairo, with Egypt being such an important key mediator in the region.

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