ReutersAt least 28 people have been killed and 54 injured in an Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced families in the central Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Red Crescent says.
Videos from the scene at Rufaida al-Aslamia school in the town of Deir al-Balah show a cloud of smoke and dust rising up as people rush to help the injured.
Witnesses said there were two air strikes that hit two rooms in the school where food aid was being stored and distributed.
The Israeli military said the “precise strike” targeted Hamas fighters operating inside a “command-and-control centre” at the school.
It also said it had taken numerous steps to mitigate harm to the civilians living there.
“This is a further example of the Hamas terrorist organisation’s systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law,” it added. Hamas has denied the allegation.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry also put the death toll at 28 and denounced what it called a “new massacre” by the Israeli military.
A list published by al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah suggested that at least two of those killed were children, five were women and three were men in their 60s.
Another person named on the list was Ahmed Adel Hamouda, 58, whose widow said he had worked in the school’s administration.
“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 programme that he saw “horrible things that are beyond description”.
“We were not able to retrieve one complete body because all the victims’ bodies turned into pieces. The number of martyrs is shocking,” he added.
Another man, Taha Majad, asked: “Why would a shelter school like this be bombed by F-16 jets? We are humans, aren’t we?”
Many schools have been turned into shelters for the 1.9 million Palestinians who have fled their homes since the war in Gaza started a year ago.
Despite that, the UN says more than 200 schools have been hit, with at least 50 being completely destroyed.
Rufaida school is located inside the Israeli-designated al-Mawasi “humanitarian area”, where the Israeli military has told Palestinians to flee despite it being overcrowded and lacking basic services.
They include all of the estimated 400,000 people currently living in the north of Gaza, where Israeli forces are continuing a ground offensive on Jabalia and its urban refugee camp.
Reuters news agency cited Palestinian health officials as saying that at least 130 people had been killed since Sunday, when the Israeli military announced it was launching an operation in response to intelligence that Hamas fighters were regrouping there.
The Israeli military said on Wednesday morning its forces had killed “more than 50 terrorist operatives” and located large quantities of weapons in the Jabalia area over the previous 24 hours.
Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
More than 42,060 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.
