An Israeli airstrike has hit a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, killing more than 60 people, health authorities have confirmed.
The Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency service said the devastating strike – on the Tabeen school in central Gaza City – also wounded 47 people. Many of the casualties were women and children, a spokesperson for the Civil Defence first responders said.
The Israeli military has acknowledged the strike and claimed it hit a ‘Hamas command center’ within the school, but has not provided any evidence. It is the latest Israeli strike on a school housing displaced people in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war started some 10 months ago.
UN’s Palestine refugee agency says 70 percent of its schools in Gaza have been bombed, with hundreds of educational facilities, including universities, hit.
The Tabeen school, like almost all of Gaza Strip’s schools, was being used as a shelter for citizens forced to flee their homes by the war, which has for several years devastated the region and killed more than 39,000 people.
The strike hit without warning in the early morning before sunrise while civilians were praying at a mosque inside the school, according to Abu Anas, a witness rescue worker.
Abu said: “People were praying, people were washing and there were people upstairs sleeping, including children, women, and old people. The missile fell on them without warning. The first missile, and the second. We recovered them as body parts.”
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defence first responders, said three missiles ripped through the school and the mosque inside, where roughly 6,000 displaced people were taking shelter from the war.
Many of the dead were unrecognizable, he said, adding that he expected the death toll to rise. He added that many of the casualties were women and children, he added.
According to the United Nations, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged in the war as of July 6. In June, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and children, according to local health officials.
The strike came as American, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators renewed their push for the two parties to achieve a ceasefire agreement that could help calm soaring tensions in the region, following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
It follows Hamas’ October 7 attack, in which its members killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel, and abducted 250 others. According to the Health Ministry, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed more than 39,600 Palestinians and wounded more than 91,700 others.
More than 1.9 million of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, fleeing repeatedly across the territory to escape offensives. Most are now crowded into ramshackle tent camps in an area of about 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) on the Gaza coast.
