An Israeli airstrike on Thursday hit a United Nations school complex in central Gaza that had become a refuge for thousands of displaced Palestinians and, according to Israel, Hamas militants. Gaza health officials said dozens of people were killed, including women and children.
The attack was the latest in a deadly wave of fighting in central Gaza, where Israeli forces have announced an offensive against what they describe as a renewed Hamas insurgency.
The attack hit a compound that had been operated by UNRWA, the main UN agency helping Palestinians in Gaza. About 6,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the compound, located in the Nuseirat area of central Gaza, when the attack occurred, said UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma.
The Israeli military said its warplanes had attacked three classrooms in the school building housing between 20 and 30 Palestinian militants affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militia that, like Hamas, is backed by Iran. Israeli forces twice postponed the attack to reduce civilian casualties, the military said.
The exact number of victims could not be verified, but the Gaza Health Ministry said that of the approximately 40 people who died in the attack, 14 were children and nine women. Later that day, The Associated Press reported different figures, saying at least 33 people died, including three women and nine children, citing the hospital morgue.
Crowds gathered at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al Balah to mourn and pray for the dead. A local Palestinian cameraman posted footage showing a young woman holding the body of her young son.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said he was “not aware of any civilian casualties” as a result of the attack. “We carried out a precise attack against the terrorists where they were,” he said. He said militants had used the compound to plan attacks against Israeli forces, although he did not provide specific examples.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, another Israeli military spokesman, said Israeli forces had tracked the militants for three days before opening fire.
“They pointed out the three classrooms, waited three days and then killed,” he added.
Israeli security agencies have so far verified the identities of nine militants killed in the attack, “some” of whom participated in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, Admiral Hagari said.
“We are now busy confirming the identities of the additional terrorists killed,” he said.
A State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said Israel had told the United States that it was targeting Hamas militants with precision weapons. But, he added, if reports that children were among those killed in the attack were accurate, “then those are not terrorists.” He said the United States expected Israel to be “totally transparent” in releasing more information.
A spokesman for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Khalil Daqran, said at least 140 Palestinians had been killed and hundreds more wounded in recent days during the Israeli offensive in central Gaza, which had severely affected the already exhausted hospital resources.
“Injured patients were lying on the floor in the hallways and in tents outside,” he said. “And our ability to treat them right now is extremely limited.”
For hours early Thursday morning, a man, Haitham Abu Ammar, searched through the rubble of the school. When dawn broke, he struggled to gather the body parts of a friend who had died in the explosion.
“The most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life was picking up those pieces of meat with my hands,” said Abu Ammar, a 27-year-old construction worker. “I never thought I’d have to do something like this.”
In the crowded, chaotic hallways of the hospital – the last functioning medical center in Gaza – men cried for dead children while doctors had to make their way to the operating rooms. A man, lying in his own blood, had waited fruitlessly for hours to undergo surgery, said a relative who accompanied him.
A journalist who visited the hospital morgue on Thursday experienced the overwhelming stench of dead bodies, with loved ones screaming and crying over them.
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s top diplomat, called for an independent investigation into the Israeli attack.
B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, said the Israeli attack on the school-turned-shelter could be a war crime. He said that if Hamas had actually used the complex for military purposes, as the Israeli military claims, that would also be illegal. “But that could not justify massive harm to the civilians who had fled there, terrified by the ongoing fighting,” B’Tselem said in a statement.
At least one bomb used in the Israeli attack on the school building on Thursday appeared to have been manufactured in the United States, according to a weapons expert and videos reviewed by The New York Times. It was identified as a GBU-39, a relatively small, precision-guided bomb made by Boeing Corp. that has become an increasingly important weapon as Israel has shifted to more limited and targeted strikes.
As the renewed Israeli offensive in central Gaza unfolded, ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas remained stalled, with senior officials on both sides expressing deep concern over a proposal backed by President Biden for a gradual truce that It would also allow the release of any held hostages. in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
The Biden administration this week sent senior officials to Egypt and Qatar, who have been mediating the talks. But Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have signaled they are unwilling to end their eight-month war in Gaza, which has killed more than 36,000 people there, according to Palestinian health officials in the enclave.
At least 450 people have died while taking shelter in schools and other UNRWA-run facilities since the start of the war, the agency says.
Israeli forces attacked the same compound that was attacked on Thursday in Nuseirat just three weeks ago, killing at least six people and wounding others, UNRWA said.
The number of people in central Gaza has increased in recent weeks as Gazans fled an Israeli offensive on the southern city of Rafah, which had been the main refuge for civilians displaced by fighting elsewhere. . With the offensive in Rafah, hundreds of thousands of Gazans are crowding into temporary camps in the area, where finding enough food and clean water has become a daily struggle.
Before the war, UNRWA ran a school for children in the Nuseirat compound. The agency says it has shared the coordinates of all its facilities – including the one that was attacked on Thursday – with Israel and “other parties to the conflict” so that they are not attacked.
“Attacking, attacking or using UN buildings for military purposes is a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, wrote on social media on Thursday. He called Israel’s allegations of militant use of the complex “shocking,” but said the agency was unable to verify them.
In mid-April, UNRWA said in a report that the Israeli military had committed most of the “attacks and actions” that had damaged or damaged the agency’s facilities, but that Palestinian armed groups had also been responsible for some.
The United Nations human rights office said in a statement Thursday that it was shocked by the Israeli attack in Nuseirat, saying it “suggests a failure” by the Israeli military to “ensure strict compliance with international humanitarian law, in particular the basic principles of distinction”. , proportionality and caution in attack.”
The report was contributed by Bilal Shbair, Nader Ibrahim, Christian Triebert, Anushka Patil, Rawan Sheikh AhmadJohnatan Reiss and Lauren Leatherby.