An Israeli air strike on a school in Gaza City killed at least 22 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted the Hamas leadership center at the al-Falah school, which Israel says the terrorist group was using to “plan and carry out terrorist attacks against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel”.
The school, which was closed during the war, was a home for homeless people, said the Ministry of Health.
The IDF said it had taken steps to reduce the risk of harming civilians, including using precision weapons and aerial surveillance, and accused Hamas of exploiting civilian infrastructure.
Hamas “systematically violates international law by operating within the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip and exploits the Gazan population through its acts of terror”, the IDF said.
Hamas has denied using schools and other public spaces for military purposes.
The Hamas-affiliated state media office said those killed in Saturday’s strike in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood included 13 children – one three-month-old – and six women.
Gaza’s civil defense agency reported the same number of dead and added that one of the women was pregnant.
On Saturday and Saturday, the Ministry of Health said that four of its employees were killed and six were injured during an Israeli “target” in the warehouse of the Ministry of Health in the Musabah area of southern Gaza. The Ministry did not specify whether the incident was an airstrike.
The BBC has contacted the IDF for comment on the report of the health workers killed.
Some schools have been hit, some several times, by Israeli airstrikes since the latest war with Hamas began on 7 October.
Earlier this month, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (Unrwa) said its six employees they were killed in an Israeli airstrike at the al-Jaouni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, which is used as a shelter for thousands of displaced Palestinians.
Unrwa said that this is the fifth time the school has been hit since October 7.
The Israeli military said it carried out a “direct strike against terrorists” planning an attack on the school. The army suspected that nine of the dead were members of the armed wing of Hamas and three of them were Unrwa workers.
Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on October 7 last year, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
Israel responded with a military operation in Gaza that has killed more than 41,000 people, according to the health ministry.
Source link
