A Israeli military A strike on a school sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza City on Saturday killed at least 22 people, the Hamas-run health ministry said. Meanwhile, Israel said the attack targeted a Hamas militant group’s command center.
The strike at the school in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City injured another 30, Gaza’s health ministry said, adding that most of those killed were women and children.
The Israeli army said it struck a Hamas “command and control center, which was embedded in a facility that previously functioned” as a school, repeating an accusation that the group uses civilian facilities for military purposes. Hamas denies it.
Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images
The Israel Defense Forces said that before the attack, “many measures were taken to reduce the risk of harming civilians.”
“The terrorist organization Hamas systematically violates international law by operating from within civilian infrastructure,” the army said.
Video footage from the scene showed blasted walls, damaged and burned furniture and holes in the ceiling of a room.
– The women and their children were sitting on the school’s playground, the children were playing and suddenly two rockets hit them, said a witness Said Al-Malahi to Reuters.
The war began nearly a year ago when Hamas-led fighters killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an attack on southern Israel on October 7. They abducted another 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
Elsewhere, Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah exchanged fire in the latest escalation between the two. The tit-for-tat strikes have forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.