At least 30 killed in Israeli strike on school, Gaza health officials say

At least 30 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a school that had been housing displaced people in Gaza on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said, while Israel’s military said it had struck a Hamas command centre in the school complex.

Fifteen children and eight women were among those killed in the strike on the school in the central town of Deir Al-Balah, the Hamas-run government media office said. The media office and the Gaza health ministry said more than 100 people were wounded.

The Israeli military said in a statement it had targeted a “Hamas command and control center inside the Khadija school compound in central Gaza”.

The statement said the school was being used to launch attacks against troops and as a weapons cache and that it warned civilians before the strike.

At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, ambulances raced wounded Palestinians into the medical facility. Some of the wounded also arrived on foot, their clothes stained with blood.

Reuters footage showed people returning to the site of the bombing to check on their belongings, and fires burning in the area. Walls were blasted and debris scattered in the schoolyard, where some cars were damaged.

Um Hasan Ali, a displaced woman living at the school, said it had only been a couple of months since she returned to Gaza from Egypt with her daughter who had been taken there for medical treatment, and now her daughter had been wounded in the strike and taken to hospital.

Another woman, Ibtihal Ahmed, told Reuters she was sitting in a neighbour’s tent when she heard heavy strikes.

“I started running, my daughter was one place and I was at another, I saw people running towards the place that was struck. The people sheltering in Khadija school are all wounded people, they are innocent and this should not happen to them,” she said.

In previous such strikes that have hit civilian infrastructure, Israel’s military has blamed the militant Islamist group Hamas for putting civilians in harm’s way, accusing it of operating within densely populated neighbourhoods, schools and hospitals as cover. Hamas denies this.

KAHN YOUNIS FIGHTING

Earlier on Saturday, Palestinian official media said that at least 14 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks since dawn in the southern city of Khan Younis and that their bodies were brought to Nasser Medical Complex.

The Israeli military told Palestinians to temporarily evacuate southern neighborhoods of Khan Younis so it could “forcefully operate” there, telling them to relocate to a humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, a military statement said.

The military said its calls to evacuate were communicated to the population via several mediums to mitigate danger to civilians.

In Al-Bureij refugee camp, five Palestinians were killed earlier in an Israeli air strike on a house, while four others were killed in another strike on a house in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, medics said.

U.N. and humanitarian officials accuse Israel of using disproportionate force in the war and of failing to ensure civilians have safe places to go, which it denies.

On Friday the military said troops battled Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis, and destroyed tunnels and other infrastructure, as they sought to suppress small militant units that have continued to hit troops with mortar fire.

The fighting, more than nine months after the start of Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, underlined the difficulty the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has in eliminating fighters of the group amid continued resistance.

In Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, blamed the escalating Israeli attacks on the support of the United States.

More than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes in the enclave since the war began, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not distinguish between fighters and non-combatants.

Israeli officials estimate that some 14,000 fighters from militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been killed or taken prisoner, out of a force they estimated to number more than 25,000 at the start of the war.

Around 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage in the Oct. 7 raid on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies.