Gaza rescuers say Israeli strike on school-turned-shelter kills 21

GAZA — Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli strike on Saturday on a school-turned-shelter in the Palestinian territory's largest city killed 21 people, while Israel's military said it targeted Hamas fighters.

"Civil Defence crews recovered 21 people, including 13 children and six women," one of whom was pregnant, said agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

There were "around 30 injured, including nine children [needing] limb amputations, as a result of an Israeli bombing on Al Zaytoun School C" in Gaza City, he said.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory also said 21 people were killed.

Thousands of displaced people had sought shelter at the school, Bassal said.

Israel said in a statement the air force had "conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre in Gaza City".

It said the target was “embedded inside” the Al Falah School, adja-cent to the Al Zaytoun School buildings. An AFP reporter at the scene confirmed that Al Zaytoun School C had been hit.

Witnesses said that before the strike, or-phans had gathered there because they were due to receive sponsorship from a lo-cal NGO for humani-tarian assistance.

Israel’s military did not provide a death toll but said “numer-ous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, in-cluding the use of pre-cise munitions, aerial surveillance and addi-tional intelligence”.

It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced peo-ple in Gaza.

A strike on the Unit-ed Nations-run Al Jawni School in cen-tral Gaza on Septem-ber 11 drew interna-tional outcry after the UN agency for Pales-tinian refugees said six of its staffers were among the 18 reported fatalities.

The Israeli military accuses Hamas of hid-ing in school buildings where many thousands of Gazans have sought shelter — a charge de-nied by the Palestinian militant group.

Hamas on Saturday condemned the strike on Al Zaytoun School C, describing it in a state-ment as “a war crime under American cover”, a reference to Wash-ington being Israel’s most important mili-tary backer.

“There has also been an increase in attacks on residential neigh-bourhoods and tents of displaced people,” the Hamas statement said.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the ongoing war, which was trig-gered by Hamas’ Octo-ber 7 attack on Israel.

‘Health ministry staffers killed’

The war has badly bat-tered Gaza’s health sector, and the World Health Organisation said earlier this month that only 17 of its 36 hospitals were partial-ly functional.

Gaza’s health min-istry said on Saturday that in a separate in-cident, an Israeli air strike hit a warehouse in a “densely popu-lated” area of south-ern Gaza, killing “three ministry of health per-sonnel and a passer-by” and injuring six others.

“The warehouse was directly targeted with several missiles while doctors and staff were performing their du-ties, preparing to transport the medi-cines stored there to hospitals under the ministry of health that are facing severe short-ages of medicines and supplies,” a statement said.

Israel’s military had no immediate com-ment on the warehouse strike. Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, ac-cording to an AFP tally based on official Is-raeli figures, which in-cludes hostages killed in captivity.

Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 97 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 33 who the Israeli military says are dead.

At least 41,391 Pal-estinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began, according to data provided by the health ministry there. The United Na-tions has acknowl-edged these figures as reliable.