15 Palestinians killed in Israeli bombing of UN school in Gaza

At least 15 people were killed on Sunday in an Israeli airstrike on a school belonging to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, the Hamas-controlled Gaza government announced.

Some 80 wounded people were also brought to Al Awda hospital in Nuseirat following the attack, which hit the Abu Arban school, where hundreds of displaced people were seeking refuge from the fighting that has ravaged the Palestinian territory, where more than 38,500 people have lost their lives since the war began.

In a statement, the Army justified the bombing of the school by saying that it “served as a hiding place and operational infrastructure from which attacks once morest the armed forces were planned and carried out.”

Risks

They also said they sought to mitigate the risk of harming civilians by using precision munitions and other additional intelligence-based measures.

“No one contacted us to report the presence of militants or wanted persons inside the school,” said Adnan Abu Hasna, media adviser to UNRWA, in a statement, noting that a total of 550 people have died in such centres.

In addition, according to the agency’s latest report, 197 UNRWA workers have lost their lives since 7 October and 188 of its facilities have been damaged by Israeli attacks.

Videos

Videos broadcast on Palestinian channels show hundreds of people running through the school yard, some carrying wounded people, while in the affected area dozens of civilians try to dig out those trapped in the rubble, including a child.

Another image shows two men following those carrying the wounded, each carrying an amputated arm belonging to someone else, while one of them shouts “God, have mercy on us.”

The attack follows another particularly violent day, when the Israeli army bombed what it had designated as a “humanitarian zone” in Mawasi, killing some 90 people and wounding 300 others, the Hamas-controlled health ministry in the Gaza Strip reported yesterday.

Since the war began, a total of 38,584 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and another 88,881 have been wounded, not including the thousands of people still trapped under the rubble across the devastated enclave.

Gaza / EFE