Israeli warplanes struck the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on Saturday night, killing at least 33 people and wounding dozens, health officials said.

The strike came after United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken’s meeting with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan on Saturday with the parties disagreeing on the need for an immediate ceasefire.

An Israeli military spokesperson said they were looking into whether its troops had been operating in the area at the time.

Hamas in a statement said Israel had “directly” bombed citizens’ homes, adding that most of the dead were women and children.

Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, visited the troops inside the Gaza Strip on Saturday, a military spokesman said, in the first such visit since the war began four weeks ago.

The Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said Israeli forces were fighting “hard” inside Gaza, and that troops had “completed the encircling” of Gaza City.

He said Israeli soldiers had “entered populated areas”.

READ ALSO: Hamas vows to confront Israeli attacks with ‘full force’

Between 350,000 to 400,000 people remain in northern Gaza, U.S. special envoy, David Satterfield, said on Saturday.

According to AFP, between 800,000 to a million Gazans have moved from the north to the south of the enclave heeding Israel’s call for an evacuation of northern Gaza as the war against Hamas intensifies.

At least 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday on a UN school in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Palestinian death toll in the Gaza has reached 9,488 people, including 3,900 children, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Strip said.

In the occupied West Bank, more than 140 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.

The death toll of French citizens killed as a result of Hamas’ attacks in Israel rose to 39, according to the French foreign ministry.

The October 7 Hamas attack killed more than 1,400 people and more than 200 people were taken hostage.

Thousands of Israelis protested outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in central Jerusalem, calling on the Israeli leader to resign in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday in Milan, Paris, and Washington to call for a halt to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

The Star