Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could visit the United States as early as next week, President Donald Trump said Thursday as dozens of people were killed in a strike on school in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials.
“We’ll speak about Israel, and we’ll speak about what’s going on,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “That’s another thing we’d like to get solved,” he said, although he did not provide further details about the Israeli leader's trip. A spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office said they had nothing to add on the matter.
Trump's comments came as Israel has ramped up its military campaign in Gaza moving to seize swaths of territory across the enclave to expand what the country's military described as its “security zone.”
Dozens of people were killed in a strike on the Al-Arqam School in northern Gaza on Thursday where families were sheltering, according to local health officials and the Civil Defense agency in the enclave which has been run by Hamas since 2007.
Young children, their faces bloodied, were among those filmed by an NBC News team on the ground, as they were rushed to the Al-Ma’madani Hospital nearby.
At least 27 people, some of them children, were killed in the strike and 70 others injured, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said. Several people were reported missing following the strike, including a woman who was nine months pregnant with twins, the Civil Defense agency said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News on the attack which Hamas called a “heinous crime of genocide” in a statement on Thursday.
The Israel Defense Forces said early Friday it was conducting fresh ground operations in the area of Shejaiya in northern Gaza. “Numerous” militants had been killed, with infrastructure also destroyed, including what it described as a Hamas “command and control” center, it added.
More than 50,500 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to enclave's health ministry. Israel launched its offensive after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
At least 59 hostages remain held in Gaza, of which just around two dozen are believed to still be alive, including Israeli American Edan Alexander.
Netanyahu, who said Tuesday that he would expand of Israel’s offensive in Gaza to ramp up pressure on the Palestinian enclave “so that they will give us our hostages,” is currently in Hungary, where officials have ignored a warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court.
Issued in November, the warrant accused Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of crimes against humanity in connection with the war in Gaza. Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a well-known supporter of Israel, vowed to defy the court’s directive shortly afterwards.
Hungary signaled on Thursday it plans to withdraw from the world court, which is not recognized by the U.S. and Israel either.
