Newsman: An Israeli airstrike hit a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City early Saturday, killing at least 80 people, in one of the deadliest strikes in the 10-month-old war between Israel and Hamas according to the Palestinian health authorities.
The Israeli military acknowledged the strike on the Tabeen school in central Gaza City, claiming it hit a Hamas command center within the school. Hamas denied that.
There have been reports of increasing Israeli attacks on Gaza’s schools, which have become shelters for people who have been forced to flee their homes by the war.
The strike hit without warning in the early morning before sunrise as people were praying at a mosque inside the school, according to a witness who worked to rescue people.
“There were people praying, there were people washing and there were people upstairs sleeping, including children, women and old people,” witness told news reporters. “The missile fell on them without warning. The first missile, and the second. We recovered them as body parts.”
Three missiles ripped through the school and the mosque inside, where about 6,000 displaced people were taking shelter from the war, said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the Hamas-run local government.
Many of the dead were unrecognizable, he said, adding that he expected the death toll to rise. Many of the casualties were women and children, he said.
In a report issued Monday, the U.N. Human Rights Office said there were at least 17 attacks on schools in the previous month — seven of them in the previous eight days alone — that reportedly killed 163 people, many of them women and children. Many of the schools were serving as shelters, the report said, adding that Israel has a duty under international law to provide safe shelter for the displaced.
The U.N. said that as of July 6, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza had been directly hit or damaged in the war.
“There’s no justification for these massacres,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement posted on the social media platform X, in reference to the strikes on schools.
On Thursday Israel’s military hit two schools sheltering displaced people in eastern Gaza City, killing at least 15 people, according to hospital officials.
Israel has blamed civilian deaths in Gaza on Hamas, saying the group endangers noncombatants by using schools and residential neighborhoods as bases for operations and attacks.
