Raid against Gaza, 14 dead in a school. Israel: "It was a terrorist den"

The Civil Protection of Gaza announced yesterday evening that fourteen people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school used as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war, with the Israeli military saying it targeted Hamas “terrorists.” “There are 14 martyrs and several wounded following the Al-Jouni school massacre in the Nousseirat refugee camp,” in the central Gaza Strip, civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said. He had earlier said the dead included “women and children.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres deplored the deaths of six staff members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) at the site. “A school transformed into shelter for 12,000 people was again targeted by Israeli air strikes today. Six of our colleagues from UNRWA are among the dead,” he wrote on X.

“What is happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable“, stressed Guterres, declaring that “these dramatic violations of international humanitarian law must stop immediately”.

According to UNRWA, “this is the highest number of deaths among our staff in a single incident.” A medical source at the al-Awda clinic in Nousseirat, one of two facilities where the dead and wounded were taken, said 15 people were killed and 44 injured. AFP was unable to independently verify these figures.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force had “carried out a precision strike against terrorists operating inside a Hamas command center” in Al-Jouni school. Hamas government media in the Gaza Strip said the school, run by UNRWA, was home to around 5,000 displaced people at the time of the attack. Outside al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah, several people arrived on stretchers from the scene of the attack. Some were visibly unconscious and the AFP correspondent saw at least one child and several women among the wounded. “There is no safe place in the Gaza Strip,” said Oum Ayman, a Palestinian woman who was outside the hospital at the time.

In recent months, the army has targeted several schools in the Gaza Strip, accusing them of hosting Hamas command centers, which the Palestinian Islamist movement denies. Tens of thousands of displaced people have taken refuge in schools since the start of the war in Gaza, after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel.