An Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter in the central Gaza Strip has killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens of others, according to Palestinian authorities.
“Palestine Red Crescent teams responded to 28 fatalities and 54 injuries following the Israeli occupation army’s targeting of Rafida School,” the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Thursday. Gaza’s Health Ministry also confirmed the death toll.
“The Israeli occupation committed a new massacre by targeting the displaced in the [Rafida] school in the Deir el-Balah area in the central governorate this afternoon, where 28 martyrs and more than 54 injuries arrived at the hospitals,” the ministry said.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said children and women “were torn to pieces by the intensity of the strike”.
“I saw with my own eyes lots of bodies that were torn to pieces, making it quite hard to identify them unless family members managed to find out who they were from some signs in their clothing in the hospital morgue,” Abu Azzoum said.
He said the Israeli army did not issue a warning before striking the building.
The Israeli army claimed in a statement the strike targeted Hamas fighters operating from a so-called command-and-control centre “embedded inside a compound that previously served as the [Rafida] School”.
It did not provide evidence, but claimed the building was used “to plan and execute terrorist attacks against [Israeli army] troops and the State of Israel”.
Thursday’s attack was the latest in a string of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza, where fighting has raged for more than a year.
The attacks have predominantly killed children and women. Many of the schools run by the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have also been damaged or destroyed.
On September 26, at least 15 people were killed in another school-turned-shelter strike in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, according to Gaza’s civil defence.
The Israeli military launched a renewed ground assault in Jabalia, where thousands of families have been trapped inside their homes in the ravaged area that has previously seen multiple ground and aerial attacks.
According to Abu Azzoum, the Israeli army is “inspecting houses” in the camp and carrying out arrests of males who are 14 years old and older.
They are “driving them to undisclosed locations across the Gaza Strip,” he said.
At least 42,065 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began in October, 2023.
