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22-09-2024
GAZA STRIP: An Israeli air strike on a school in Gaza City has martyred dozens more Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted a Hamas command centre at the al-Falah school, which Israel said the militant group was using to “plan and carry out terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel”.
The school, closed during the war, was housing displaced people, the health ministry said.
The IDF said it took steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including using precise munitions and aerial surveillance, and accused Hamas of exploiting civilian infrastructure.
Hamas “systematically violates international law by operating from inside civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and exploiting the Gazan civilian population for its terrorist activities”, the IDF said.
Hamas has denied using schools and other civilian sites for military purposes.
The Hamas-run government media office said the people killed in Saturday’s strike in the al-Zaytoun area included 13 children, one a three-month-old baby and six women.
Gaza’s civil defence agency reported the same death toll and added that one of the women was pregnant, also on Saturday, the health ministry said that four of its workers were killed and six injured in an Israeli “targeting” of a health ministry warehouse in the Musabah area of southern Gaza. The ministry did not specify whether the incident was an air strike.
The media has approached the IDF for comment on the report of health workers killed.
Other schools have been hit, some several times, by Israeli air strikes since the latest conflict with Hamas began on 7 October.
Earlier this month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said six of its employees were killed in an Israeli air strike on al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat refugee camp, which is being used as a shelter by thousands of displaced Palestinians.
Unrwa said it was the fifth time the school had been hit since 7 October.
Israel’s military said it carried out a “precise strike on terrorists” planning attacks from the school. The military alleged that nine of those killed were members of Hamas’ armed wing and that three of them were Unrwa staff.
Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.
Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 41,000 people, according to the health ministry.
It said the target was “embedded inside” the al-Falah School, which is adjacent to the Zeitoun School buildings.
Israeli forces frequently accuse the group of using civilian facilities for military purposes. Hamas denies this.
This is the latest in a series of Israeli raids on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes by Israeli offensives and evacuation orders have been sheltering.
A strike on the United Nations-run al-Jawni School in central Gaza on September 11 drew international outcry after the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said six of its staffers were among the 18 reported deaths.
According to the media office, Israel has bombed 181 displacement and shelter centres to date. (Int’l News Desk)
