Israeli strikes in Gaza kill at least 16 as the world awaits Hamas' response to Trump's peace plan

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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel pressed its offensive in Gaza on Wednesday, with at least 16 Palestinians reported killed across the strip as the world awaited Hamas' response to U.S. President Donald Trump's peace plan for the embattled territory.

The dead included people who had sought refuge in a school sheltering the displaced in Gaza City. Al-Falah school in the city's eastern Zeitoun neighborhood was hit twice, minutes apart, according to officials at Al-Ahli Hospital.

Among the casualties were first responders, they said. Five Palestinians were killed later on Wednesday morning, when a strike hit people gathered around a drinking water tank on the western side of Gaza City, the same hospital said.

Also in Gaza City, the Shifa Hospital said it received the body of a man killed in a strike on his apartment west of the city.

Israeli strikes also hit the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing a husband and wife, the Al-Awda hospital said. Another man was killed in a separate strike in the Bureij refugee camp, according to the same hospital.

A funeral was planned for Yahya Barzaq, a journalist working for Turkish broadcast outlet TRT who was killed in a strike in Gaza on Tuesday, according to the broadcaster.

The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the killed journalist or Wednesday's strikes.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 170,000 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its toll, but has said women and children make up around half of the dead.

The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 250 others. Most of the hostages have been freed under previous ceasefire deals, but 48 are estimated to be still held in Gaza — 20 believed by Israel to be still alive.

On Tuesday, Qatar said that further talks were needed over details of Trump’s proposal for ending the nearly two-year war in Gaza. Hamas said it would study the plan, both within the group and with other Palestinian factions, before responding.

The comments by Qatar, a key mediator, appeared to reflect Arab countries’ discontent over the text of the 20-point plan that the White House put out after Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced they had agreed on it Monday.

The plan, which has received wide international support, requires Hamas to release hostages, leave power in Gaza and disarm in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners and an end to fighting. The plan guarantees the flow of humanitarian aid and promises reconstruction in Gaza, placing it and its more than 2 million Palestinians under international governance. However, it sets no path to Palestinian statehood.

The Palestinian government in the occupied West Bank said earlier it welcomed the plan, as did the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.

The Israeli military said that starting at midday Wednesday, it would only allow Palestinians to travel south along the only north-south route still open in the coastal strip — meaning, people fleeing the intensifying fighting in Gaza City can continue to head south but they could not go north.

While the military did not offer more details on the closure, the road carries great symbolism for Palestinians. Earlier this year, when Israel opened access to the north — Gaza's most heavily destroyed area — hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crowded it, seeing their return as an act of steadfastness and defiance.

Hundreds of thousands remain displaced across Gaza, and finding food is a daily struggle.

A widely watched flotilla of activists carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid is sailing toward Gaza, in what organizers have described as the largest attempt to date to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the strip.

The activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla of about 50 vessels say they expect Israeli authorities to intercept them, as has happened in past flotilla attempts to reach Gaza. On Wednesday, they said two of the vessels were harassed by an Israeli warship overnight, though it stopped short of intercepting them.

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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Giovanna Dell'Orto in Jerusalem and Renata Brito in Barcelona, Spain, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war