Israeli strike on Gaza school reportedly kills more than 100
More than 100 Palestinians have been killed and dozens more wounded in an Israeli strike on a Gaza school sheltering displaced people, it has been reported.
Palestinian health officials from the Hamas-run Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency Service said on Saturday morning that an airstrike by the Israeli military had hit the Tabeen school in central Gaza City.
The facility, like almost all of Gaza’s schools, has been used as a shelter for people who have been forced to flee their homes by the war. A further 47 people were wounded, the Associated Press reported.
“The occupation army directly bombed the displaced people while they were performing the dawn prayer, and this caused the number of martyrs to rise rapidly,” the Gaza government media office said in a statement following the attack on Saturday morning.
The Israeli military claimed that its air force targeted a command and control centre where Hamas commanders and operatives were hiding.
The military said it had taken steps to reduce the risk of harming civilians, “including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and intelligence information.”
Three missiles ripped through the school and the mosque inside, where about 6,000 displaced people were taking shelter from the war, said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defence first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government.
He added that many of the dead were unrecognisable and that the casualties included women and children. He said he expected the death toll to rise.
According to the United Nations, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged in the war as of 6 July. In June, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and children, according to local health officials.
Israel has blamed the civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying the group endangers noncombatants by using schools and residential neighborhoods as bases for operations and attacks.
Israel has been at war with Hamas in Gaza since the militant group’s 7 October attack, which saw 1,200 people massacred in southern Israel and 250 more taken hostage.
Since then, Israel has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to figures from health officials in the enclave, who say thousands of others are feared dead under the rubble.
More than 1.9 million of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, fleeing repeatedly across the territory to escape offensives. Most are now crowded into ramshackle tent camps in an area of about 50 square km on the Gaza coast.
