Palestinian health officials said at least 80 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school turned shelter in Gaza early Saturday, one of the deadliest attacks in the 10-month-long war between Israel and the Hamas insurgent group.
The Israeli military acknowledged it had attacked the al-Tabin school in central Gaza City, claiming it had struck a Hamas command center inside the school. The group, for its part, denied the claim.
The United Nations said the latest attack was part of a series of assaults by Israel on Gaza schools that have become shelters for people forced from their homes by the fighting.
Video from the scene showed shattered walls on the ground floor of the large building. Pieces of concrete and twisted metal lay on the blood-soaked floor along with clothing, fallen furniture and other debris. A blackened car with broken windows was also covered in rubble.
Fadel Naim, director of the city’s Al-Ahli hospital, told The Associated Press that the center received 70 bodies of people killed in the operation and at least 10 others. The Gaza Health Ministry said another 47 people were injured.
According to Naim, some of the wounded suffered severe burns and several had their legs amputated.
“We have received some of the most seriously injured people in the war,” he said.
Details of Israeli airstrike
The attack came without warning, before dawn, when people were praying in a mosque inside the school, said Abu Anas, a witness who took part in rescue efforts.
“There were people praying, washing clothes and sleeping on the top floor, including children, women and the elderly,” he said. “The missiles fell on them without warning. The first missile and the second. “We pulled them out in pieces.”
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense rescue team working under the Hamas government, said three shells penetrated inside the school and mosque, where about 6,000 displaced people were taking refuge from the war.
He said many of the dead could not be identified and feared the death toll could rise. He said most of the dead were women and children.
The United Nations previously said that as of July 6, 477 of Gaza’s 564 schools had been directly hit or damaged in the war. In a report published on Saturday, the UN human rights office says there have been at least 21 attacks on schools since July 4, resulting in hundreds of deaths, including women and children. Many schools served as shelters, according to the report, which said Israel has a duty under international law to provide safe haven to displaced people.
“There is no justification for these massacres,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement referring to these operations.
Israel has blamed Hamas for the deaths of civilians in Gaza and says the group endangers non-combatants by using schools and residential neighborhoods as bases for its operations and attacks.
Israeli intelligence services have indicated that about 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad insurgents, including senior commanders, were using the al-Tabin school complex to plan attacks against Israeli soldiers, army spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said in a statement posted on the social network X. He also questioned the figures on victims presented by the Palestinian Health Ministry.
They deny the presence of Hamas rebels
Izzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas commander, denied there were insurgents in the school.
Israel reported the center was located next to a mosque that served as a refuge for Gaza City residents.
But a cameraman working for the AP said the mosque and classrooms were in the same building: the prayer room on the ground floor and the school above. “It appears a missile passed through the classrooms and exploded in the mosque,” ​​he said.
The attack came as mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt increased pressure on the two sides to reach a ceasefire deal that could help calm tensions in the region after the killings of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a senior official of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia in Beirut.
Egypt, which shares the border with Gaza and is a key mediator, said the attack on the school showed Israel had no intention of agreeing to a ceasefire or stopping the war. Neighbouring Jordan also condemned the attack and called it a “gross violation” of international law.
At least 13 people, including three minors and seven women, were killed in two separate airstrikes in the center of the territory on Friday night, hospital sources said. An AP reporter counted the bodies at the Martyrs al-Aqsa Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah.
One of the attacks hit a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing seven people, all of them except a woman, he said. The other hit a house in Deir al-Balah and killed six others, including a woman and three minors, the hospital said.
More than 39,790 Palestinians have been killed and more than 92,000 injured in Israeli military attacks in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The war began with a Hamas attack on October 7, when Palestinian fighters attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage.
More than 1.9 million of the 2.3 million people who lived in Gaza before the war have been forced to leave their homes, repeatedly fleeing to other parts of the territory to escape attacks. Most are now concentrated in camps covering an area of ​​about 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) along the coast of the besieged Palestinian enclave.
