Gaza health officials said an Israeli air strike targeting a group of policemen in a school sheltering displaced Palestinians killed at least 11 people on Sunday, while the military said it had struck a Hamas command centre.
“Eleven people, including a woman and girl, were killed when an Israeli air strike struck the Safad school in Gaza City sheltering displaced people,” civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP, adding several people were also wounded.
The school had a Hamas police outpost, another Gaza health official said on condition of anonymity.
The Israeli military said its air force had struck a Hamas command centre in the Safad school.
“The IAF struck Hamas who were operating within a command and control centre embedded inside the area that previously served as the Safad school in Gaza City,” the military said in a statement.
The war between Israel and Hamas erupted after Palestinians attacked Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official
Since then, the Israeli military has been relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip from the air, sea and ground, which has so far killed at least 40,738 people, according to the territory’s health ministry.
According to the UN, the majority of the dead are women and children.
The source added that the number of Gazans killed in the Israeli bombing of the school has increased from six to 11, noting that those who sustained injuries have been taken to the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
The bodies of the killed people “were torn apart and scattered due to the intensity of the Israeli bombing,” witnesses told Anadolu news agency.
They added that one of the school’s buildings, where hundreds of displaced people have sheltered, was destroyed.
The Palestinian Civil Defense Agency said that the school has been evacuated after Israeli threats to attack its premises.
Since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023, the regime has systematically attacked civic infrastructure, including schools housing displaced people, hospitals and places of worship, often claiming without evidence they are linked to Hamas, to evade international criticism.
More than 100 citizens were killed and dozens more injured on August 10 after the Israeli occupation forces bombed the al-Tabi’in school in the al-Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City, sheltering over 6,000 displaced people.
At least 40,738 Palestinians, mostly children and women, have been killed and 94,154 people wounded in the war that Israel began in early October last year following a retaliatory operation by the Palestinian territory’s resistance movements.
Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal territory, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.
