Harrowing video reportedly shows a child running through a burning building in Gaza after it was bombed by Israel, in an overnight attack which left more than 30 people dead, according to rescuers.

The Fahmi al-Jarjawi school in Gaza City, which has been housing displaced Palestinians, was targeted as part of 200 attacks on the devastated enclave in the past 48 hours, Israel’s military said.

Pictures and videos of fires tearing through the building and the destruction in the aftermath have since circulated online, with the scenes prompting condemnation from around the world.

Footage showing a little girl running through the building, which Al Jazeera and other outlets claim to have verified, was shared by Israeli national broadcaster Kann News before being deleted. It is not clear if the child in the video escaped the blaze. 

Other images from the site, where displaced families had been sheltering, show the badly burned corpses of adults and children.

In the hours since, Gaza’s Hamas-run government has said that some 18 children were among those killed in the attack, which it condemned it as a ‘brutal massacre’.

In a statement, it said Israel has been ‘deliberately and systematically’ targeting shelters for displaced people ‘in a flagrant violation of all international and humanitarian laws, and in a blatant attempt to inflict the largest possible number of civilian casualties’.

The Israeli military meanwhile said it had ‘struck key terrorists who were operating within a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre embedded in an area that previously served as the ‘Faami Aljerjawi’ School’. 

It claimed that ‘numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians’.

On Monday afternoon, the Israel army issued a far-reaching evacuation order for much of the southern Gaza Strip, warning people to move to the Mawasi area on the coast.

‘The IDF will launch an unprecedented attack to destroy the capabilities of terror organizations [in this area],’ the military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, said on X.

He added that the evacuated area is considered ‘a dangerous combat zone’ and that the coastal area would be designated a ‘safer zone’.

Overall, more than 50 people have been killed in attacks since dawn on Monday, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Responding to recent Israeli attacks in an interview today, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said they are taking a humanitarian toll on civilians that can no longer be justified as a fight against terrorism.

‘Harming the civilian population to such an extent, as has increasingly been the case in recent days, can no longer be justified as a fight against Hamas terrorism,’ he told broadcaster WDR in a televised interview.

He added he planned to hold a call with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week to tell him ‘to not overdo it,’ though for ‘historical reasons’, Germany would always be more guarded in its criticism than some European partners.

The UN said on Sunday that at least 3,785 people had been killed in Gaza since a ceasefire collapsed on March 18, taking the overall death toll to 53,939 – most of whom are civilians. 

Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Palestinian terrorists also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.

Donald Trump has said he wants to end the war in Gaza ‘as quickly as possible’, with sources reportedly suggesting that he could announce a ceasefire ‘within the coming days’.

‘We want to see if we can stop it. And we’ve talked to Israel, we want to see if we can stop this whole situation as quickly as possible,’ the US President told reporters as he boarded Air Force One. 

Meanwhile, Sky News Arabia and other news outlets in the region cited sources as saying that there is a growing likelihood that Trump will announce a ceasefire in the coming days.

It would come as part of a deal that would include the release of Israeli hostages, the anonymous ‘knowledgeable sources’ reportedly said. 

Israel has been intensifying its offensive in Gaza over recent weeks, at the same time as its three-month blockade of humanitarian supplies into the war-ravaged strip has sharpened international condemnation.

The day before, Israeli strikes killed 22 people and wounded dozens more across the Palestinian territory, the Gaza civil defence agency said.

Arab and European nations gathered yesterday to seek an end to the conflict while Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel.

He also called for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza ‘massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel’, describing the territory as humanity’s ‘open wound’.

It comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer and the leaders of France and Canada of siding with Hamas after they shared a joint statement issued last week denouncing Israel’s ‘disproportionate’ escalation.

Monday’s joint statement had been welcomed by Hamas, who described the stance as ‘an important step’ in the right direction toward restoring the principles of international law.

At the weekend, Gaza rescuers were struggling to retrieve bodies from the rubble after a series of Israeli strikes.

In one home in Jabalia, in the north, seven people were killed and several others stuck under debris, Bassal said.

‘The civil defence does not have search equipment or heavy equipment to lift the rubble to rescue the wounded and recover the martyrs,’ the spokesman said.

Two more people, including a woman who was seven months pregnant, were killed in an attack targeting tents sheltering displaced people around Nuseirat in central Gaza, he said, adding that doctors were unable to save the unborn child.

Deadly strikes were also recorded around Deir el-Balah in the centre of the territory, Beit Lahia in the north and the main southern city of Khan Yunis.

The civil defence agency said on Saturday that an Israeli strike in Khan Yunis killed nine children of a pair of married doctors, with the Israeli army saying it was reviewing the reports.

Israel has in recent days partially eased a blockade that was imposed on March 2, which exacerbated widespread shortages of food and medicine in Gaza.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that coordinates civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that ‘107 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid… were transferred’ into Gaza on Sunday.

But critics charge that this is nowhere near enough, especially as many of the aid trucks end up being looted.

The World Food Programme has called on Israel ‘to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster’, saying: ‘Hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity.’

The head of a controversial US-backed NGO preparing to move aid into Gaza also announced his abrupt resignation on Sunday.

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) executive director Jake Wood said he felt compelled to leave after determining that the organisation could not fulfil its mission in a way that adhered to ‘humanitarian principles’.

The GHF has vowed to distribute about 300 million meals in its first 90 days of operation.

But the United Nations and traditional aid agencies have already said they will not cooperate with the group, amid accusations it is working with Israel.