RESCUERS were searching for survivors today in the rubble of two Gaza City schools bombed by Israeli forces on Sunday.

The bombing raid against what Israel claims were Hamas command-and-control centres in the schools was the third targeting of schools in a week by its military. 

At least 30 people were killed in Sunday’s strikes, mostly children, adding to 32 killed in the previous two school bombings. Paramedics described screaming mothers shifting rubble as they searched for their children.

Palestinians say the schools were housing people displaced by the invasion of Gaza. Israel has stepped up attacks on supposed safe zones and refuges in recent weeks.

Violence also erupted in Nablus in the West Bank, where Israeli troops conducted raids ahead of escorting a group of illegal settlers to Joseph’s Tomb, a shrine holy to Samaritans, Jews, Muslims and Christians.

The city’s fruit and vegetable market caught fire, with locals saying Israeli troops had hurled burning tyres into it. The Nablus Battalion of the Jerusalem Brigades, a Palestinian armed group, said it had fired on Israeli soldiers.

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said yesterday the country would accelerate direct colonisation of the West Bank to ensure no future Palestinian state was ever viable.

Mr Smotrich said that “strengthening settlements in construction, development, establishment and regulation of settlements and infrastructure” was the best response to calls from the United States and other Israeli allies for progress towards a sovereign Palestine, as promised in the Oslo accords.

Israel has arrested thousands of West Bank Palestinians since invading Gaza. Yesterday a 50-year-old woman, Wafaa Nayef Jarrar, died from injuries sustained during her arrest by Israeli troops in Jenin on May 21.