Scores die in overnight strikes

Plan for end to war missing some details, says Hamas official. ISRAEL BOMBARDS KINDERGARTEN

Scores were reported killed in overnight strikes across the Gaza Strip yesterday, after Hamas said it needed more time to consider a proposal that would halt its war with Israel in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said early yesterday that at least 92 people had been killed overnight, including in what the group’s media office said was an Israeli bombardment of a kindergarten in Rafah, where displaced people were sheltering.

Concerns over a potential Israeli

ground incursion into the southern border city have mounted in recent days, with hundreds of thousands of displaced seeking refuge from the fighting there in makeshift shelters and encampments.

Many made the journey from even harder-hit areas after being told the city was a safe zone, but strikes have continued there as well, with mourners gathering outside a local hospital on Saturday to pray for the dead after another bombardment.

“The children were just sleeping and suddenly the bombardment happened. The bedroom fell on my children,” Ahmad Bassam al-Jamal said, his voice breaking. “My child now is a martyr in heaven.”

The city that had been home to 200 000 people now hosts more than half of Gaza’s population, the United Nations said. A representative of the UN humanitarian agency Ocha has called Rafah “a pressure cooker of despair”.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned on Thursday that the military, which began its ground invasion in the territory’s north and has gradually advanced south, “will also reach Rafah”.

Civilians who fled to the city have been pushed up against the border with Egypt, trying to avoid areas exposed to bombardment and fighting in nearby Khan Yunis. “We are exhausted,” said displaced Gazan Mahmud Abu al Shaar, urging “a ceasefire so that we can return to our homes”.

International mediators are making a full-court press to seal a proposed truce deal thrashed out last week in Paris.

But a top Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, said the proposed framework was missing some details. Hamas needed more time to “announce our position”, Hamdan said, “based on... our desire to put an end as quickly as possible to the aggression”. –