Turkey says over 30 civilians killed in attacks on Gaza health facilities
Israeli strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, including four children, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. WAFA said Israel has attacked the enclave every day since Thursday, the day President Donald Trump announced that his Board of Peace had reached a tentative agreement with Hamas and other militant groups.
Under the framework, which Trump announced after months of negotiations, Hamas and other militant groups committed to disarm in Gaza on condition that Israel withdraws its troops from the enclave. The agreement has drawn opposition from within Israel’s government and criticism from Turkey’s foreign ministry, one of the mediators in the talks, which said violence has continued since the announcement.
Nickolay Mladenov, director general of the Board of Peace and a former Bulgarian defense minister, said the attacks came despite the framework. “My team and I are working around the clock with the parties, the mediators and regional partners to de-escalate and create the space for the full implementation of the president’s plan,” Mladenov said in an online statement.
The agreement has drawn opposition within Israel’s government. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist and far-right politician, called the tentative agreement “unacceptable to Israel” in a Telegram statement Friday. Ben-Gvir said the targeted killings in Gaza “must continue, emigration must be encouraged and Israel must win.”
Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one of the mediators in the negotiations, said Sunday that more than 30 civilians were killed in Israeli attacks on health facilities following the framework’s announcement. The ministry accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of seeking to displace Palestinians from their homes and obstructing any effort to establish lasting peace, saying his government’s continued steps “destabilize the already fragile regional balance and undermine the initiatives of mediating countries, particularly the USA.”
Mohammad Dahlan, an exiled Palestinian politician involved in the negotiations, said Sunday he was aware that Netanyahu would try to “kill the opportunity that President Donald Trump worked on in collaboration with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.” Dahlan said he and his colleagues had worked for weeks and warned against what he described as the occupation’s behavior, and that the world now sees the scale of what he called the massacre Netanyahu committed to block the path to ending the war and establishing security for Palestinians in Gaza and for all parties.
Trump’s Board of Peace is a coalition of 28 countries, including Israel, weighted toward Middle Eastern and smaller or midsize nations. It was formed in January and is tied to a U.N.-backed, 20-point plan for the stabilization and reconstruction of Gaza. United Nations estimates show that more than 81% of all buildings and structures in Gaza have been either damaged or destroyed, and U.N. agencies have said that around $70 billion is needed to reconstruct the enclave, which measures about 25.4 miles long and between 2.7 and 7.5 miles wide along the Mediterranean.