Gaza’s civil defence company reported 21 killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday, the most recent assault on a college sheltering displaced Palestinians the place the Israeli navy stated it focused militants.
A spokesman for the civil defence company, Mahmud Bassal, stated greater than half the useless on the Gaza Metropolis faculty had been kids. In accordance with witnesses, a gaggle of orphans had earlier gathered on the constructing to obtain sponsorship from an area help group.
“Civil defence crews recovered (the our bodies of) 21 individuals, together with 13 kids and 6 girls”, certainly one of whom was pregnant, stated Bassal.
The well being ministry within the Hamas-run Gaza Strip gave the identical dying toll for what the Israeli navy stated was “a exact strike on terrorists who had been working inside a Hamas command-and-control centre… embedded inside” an adjoining faculty.
AFPTV footage confirmed the bottom flooring of the school-turned-shelter coated with concrete rubble and mangled chairs and tables, and a gaping gap within the ceiling of what seemed to be a classroom.
Hundreds of Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas struggle had sought shelter there, Bassal stated.
There have been “round 30 injured, together with 9 kids (needing) limb amputations, because of an Israeli bombing on Al-Zeitun College C” in Gaza Metropolis, he stated.
Israel’s navy stated its goal was in Al-Falah College, adjoining to the Al-Zeitun College buildings.
An AFP reporter on the scene confirmed that Al-Zeitun College C had been hit.
The navy, with out mentioning the casualties reported by Gaza’s civil defence and well being ministry, stated it had taken steps “to mitigate the danger of harming civilians, together with using exact munitions, aerial surveillance and extra intelligence”.
Displaced Gazan Randa al-Nadim informed AFP she noticed a pregnant girl killed within the strike.
“Right here a lady was martyred, and that is her blood on the steps… we discovered her stomach open and the fetus on the steps,” she stated.
“Did the fetus struggle Israel?”
It was the most recent in a sequence of Israeli strikes on faculty buildings housing displaced individuals in Gaza, the place preventing has raged on for almost a 12 months since Hamas’s October 7 assault on southern Israel.
– Warehouse hit –
A strike on the United Nations-run Al-Jawni College in central Gaza on September 11 drew worldwide outcry after the UN company for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, stated six of its staffers had been among the many 18 reported fatalities.
The Israeli navy accuses Hamas of hiding in class buildings the place many 1000’s of Gazans have sought shelter — a cost denied by the Palestinian militant group.
Hamas on Saturday condemned the strike on Al-Zeitun College C, describing it in a press release as “a struggle crime beneath American cowl”, a reference to Washington being Israel’s most essential navy backer.
The overwhelming majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million individuals have been displaced not less than as soon as by the continued struggle, which was triggered by the October 7 assault.
In a separate incident on Saturday, Gaza’s well being ministry stated an Israeli air strike hit a warehouse in a “densely populated” space within the south, killing “three well being ministry personnel and a passer-by” and injuring six others.
“The warehouse was straight focused with a number of missiles whereas docs and employees had been performing their duties, getting ready to move the medicines saved there to hospitals… which might be dealing with extreme shortages,” a press release stated.
Israel’s navy had no rapid touch upon the warehouse strike.
A minimum of 41,391 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s navy marketing campaign in Gaza for the reason that struggle started, in keeping with information offered by the well being ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged these figures as dependable.
Hamas’s October 7 assault resulted within the deaths of 1,205 individuals on the Israeli facet, most of them civilians, in keeping with an AFP tally primarily based on official Israeli figures, which incorporates hostages killed in captivity.
Out of 251 individuals taken hostage that day, 97 are nonetheless being held contained in the Gaza Strip, together with 33 who the Israeli navy says are useless.
