Blinken: US will press Israel to do more to spare Gaza humanitarian sites

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that the United States will continue to press Israel to do more to spare humanitarian sites in the Gaza Strip, a day after an Israeli airstrike on a U.N. school complex sheltering displaced Palestinians killed 14 people, including six U.N. staffers.

The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas terrorists planning attacks from inside the school.

Blinken blamed Hamas for continuing to hide its fighters among civilians and said the bombing “underscores the urgency” of reaching a cease-fire in the embattled territory.

Meanwhile, Turkey announced its own investigation into the death of a Turkish American activist who was shot and killed by Israeli forces last week while protesting settlements in the occupied West Bank. And a Syrian pro-government media outlet and an opposition war monitor said an Israeli strike hit a car in southern Syria on Thursday, killing two people.

Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war. They abducted another 250 and are still holding around 100. Around a third of them are believed to be dead.

The Hamas run-Health Ministry says more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count.

The Israeli military said a top Israeli intelligence commander announced his resignation, the second such senior figure to step down amid the fallout from the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel.

In a statement Thursday, the Israeli military said that Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, leader of Israel’s vaunted military intelligence Unit 8200, notified the army of his plans to step down and leave his post “in the near future.” The military confirmed to The Associated Press that he resigned over the security failure of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

Earlier this year, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, announced his resignation over his role in the army’s failure to anticipate or quickly respond to the deadliest assault in Israel’s history.

The Israeli military said Thursday that it has completed the destruction of Hamas’ brigade in the city of Rafah, the southernmost city of Gaza.

The military said in a statement that Israel had killed 2,000 terrorists and destroyed 8 miles of underground tunnel routes dug deep under the area. It also said that it had killed over 250 terrorists in Rafah’s western Tel al-Sultan district in recent weeks, including the commander of the battalion and most of the chain of command.

Israel began its operation in Rafah in early May.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said medical teams in Gaza were wrapping up the final day of an emergency polio vaccination campaign following the discovery of the territory’s first-known case of the illness in more than 25 years.

Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the U.N. health agency’s representative, told reporters in a news conference from Gaza that the health workers had reached more than an estimated 552,000 children under the age of 5. They used a new oral polio vaccine targeting the specific type of polio seen in Gaza.

Peeperkorn said WHO and its partners have yet to do a final analysis of how many children were actually covered, but added that it was more than expected. On Wednesday, Palestinian health officials said more than half a million Gaza children have been vaccinated.