Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defence agency said Saturday an Israeli air strike on a school building sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City killed dozens of people.
A spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said al-Taba’een school “served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility” with approximately 20 “militants” operating there.
The Gaza civil defence agency – a rescue service – said at least 90 people were killed and dozens injured. The BBC cannot independently verify the figures.
Israel has attacked several such shelters in Gaza the past few weeks.
Saturday’s strike hit when people sheltering at the school were performing dawn prayers, according to a statement from the Hamas media office quoted by Reuters news agency.
Hamas-run defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said three Israeli rockets had hit the school housing displaced Palestinians killing “between 90 to 100” people.
He described the scene as a “horrific massacre” saying crews were trying to control a fire in order to rescue the wounded and retrieve bodies.
The Hamas-run health ministry has not confirmed the figures.
Israel’s military said it had “precisely struck Hamas terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control centre embedded in the al-Taba’een school”.
A statement by IDF spokesman Lt Col Nadav Shoshani said that “based on Israeli intelligence, approximately 20 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, including senior commanders, were operating from the compound struck at the al-Tabaeen school, using it to carry out terrorist attacks”.
The spokesman said the casualty figures released by Hamas officials “do not align with the information held by the IDF, the precise munitions used, and the accuracy of the strike”.
Those reported figures for Saturday’s early-morning attack are higher than in most such strikes.
But targeting schools has become a regular feature of IDF operations in recent weeks, apparently as part of what it says is an ongoing effort to destroy Hamas military infrastructure.
Since the beginning of July, more than a dozen schools have been hit, according to unofficial tallies, including at one point four in four days.
Each time, in nearly identical statements, the IDF says Hamas is hiding in the schools and using them as command centres to plan and carry out attacks, something Hamas denies.
Whatever the case, these buildings are where many displaced Gazans have sought shelter, and they are paying the highest price.
Many of the schools were run by the UN before the war, and the UN has strongly condemned the strikes.
It is not clear if this incident will impact struggling efforts to agree a ceasefire deal, which were set back by the assassination of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran.
But Egypt, one of the mediators involved in efforts to reach such a truce, said Israel’s “deliberate killing” of unarmed Palestinians showed that Israel lacked the political will to end the war.
Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.
That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive on Gaza and the ongoing war.
More than 39,600 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
By BBC News
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