ReutersThe Palestinian Red Crescent said at least 28 people were killed and 54 injured in an Israeli airstrike on a school for displaced families in the central Gaza Strip.
Video from the scene at Rufaida al-Aslamia school in Deir al-Balah town showed clouds of smoke and dust rising as people rushed to help the injured.
Witnesses said there were two airstrikes targeting two rooms in the school where food aid was stored and distributed.
The Israeli military said the “precision strike” targeted Hamas militants operating inside a “command and control center” at the school.
They also said they had taken steps to minimize harm to civilians living there.
“This is another example of the terrorist organization Hamas’ systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law,” it added. Hamas has denied this accusation.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza also put the death toll at 28 and denounced what it called a “new massacre” by the Israeli army.
A list released by al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah showed that at least two of the dead were children, five were women and three were men in their 60s.
Another person on the list is Ahmed Adel Hamouda, 58, whose widow said he used to work on the school’s management board.
“They killed my only support in life. They killed the support of our three disabled daughters, Rahab, Alaa and Reem,” she said.
Eyewitness Khaled al-Sultan told BBC Arabic’s Gaza Today program that he saw “indescribable horrors”.
“We could not recover a complete body because the victim’s entire body had turned into many pieces. The number of martyrs is staggering,” he added.
Another man, Taha Majad, asked: “Why was a shelter school like this bombed by F-16 planes? We are human, right?”
Many schools have become shelters for the 1.9 million Palestinians who have fled their homes since the war in Gaza began a year ago.
Despite this, the United Nations said more than 200 schools were attacked, of which at least 50 were completely destroyed.
Rufaida school is located inside the Israeli-designated al-Mawasi “humanitarian zone,” where the Israeli military has told Palestinians to flee despite overcrowding and a lack of basic services.
They include all of the approximately 400,000 people currently living in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces are continuing their ground offensive on Jabalia and its urban refugee camp.
Reuters news agency quoted Palestinian health officials as saying at least 130 people had been killed since Sunday, when the Israeli military announced it was conducting an operation in response to intelligence that militants were Hamas is regrouping there.
The Israeli army said Wednesday morning that its forces had killed “more than 50 terrorists” and discovered a large amount of weapons in the Jabalia area in the previous 24 hours.
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead and 251 others taken hostage.
According to the territory’s Ministry of Health, more than 42,060 people have died in Gaza since then.
