Deir ez-Zor Barah, Gaza Strip —
At least 22 people were killed in an Israeli attack on a school in northern Gaza on Saturday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while the Israeli army said it had targeted a Hamas headquarters in a former school building.
The ministry said in a statement that 30 more people were wounded in the attack on the school in Gaza City’s Zaytun neighborhood. Most of the victims were women and children. It was not clear which hospitals the dead and injured had been taken to.
Dozens of people, including children, were digging through the rubble of the building, whose ceilings had collapsed and walls had been blown away. Outside, people were gathered around bodies wrapped in cloth, some crying and covering their faces for relatives who had died in the air raids.
“One missile, one fired from a plane, and then another hit,” said refugee Ferial Deleur. “The whole world was covered in smoke and stones, and I saw people and children being chopped up… What should we do? Is it our fault that this is happening?”
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas “command and control center” early on Saturday, “housed in a building formerly used as a school,” and said measures had been taken to limit civilian casualties, including the use of precision weapons and aerial surveillance.
Also on Saturday, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said Israeli forces had attacked a ministry warehouse in the southern Musba district, killing five staff members and wounding five.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, Israeli forces have bombed numerous schools that have become shelters for tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been forced from their homes by Israeli attacks and evacuation orders. The conflict has displaced 90 percent of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to UN figures.
The army has repeatedly accused Hamas of operating within Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, including schools, UN facilities and hospitals, and its conflicting claims over the use of the latter go to the heart of the nearly year-long conflict.
Earlier this month, Israeli forces attacked a school in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 14 people, according to Palestinian medical sources. The Israeli army said it was targeting Hamas fighters who were planning an attack from inside the school.
In July, an Israeli airstrike hit a girls’ school in Deir ez-Zor Barah, killing at least 30 people who had taken shelter inside. The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas command center that coordinated the attack on Israeli troops and stored “large quantities of weapons.”
The war began on October 7 when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Hamas has abducted about 250 people and is holding about 100 hostages. At least 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military operations in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
