Dozens of people have been killed in a strike that targeted a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, Palestinian health officials have said.
The Israeli army, which has been carrying out one of its most powerful bombings of Gaza in its decades-long conflict with the Palestinians, said it had struck a “Hamas control centre”. No evidence was provided to back up the claim.
The Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry’s ambulance and emergency service said the strike on the Tabeen school in central Gaza City killed more than 60 people and wounded 47, the Associated Press reported.
An estimated 6,000 displaced people were sheltering in the school when it was struck by three missiles, according to Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government.
‘We recovered them as body parts’
“The Israeli strikes targeted the displaced people while performing Fajr [dawn] prayers, a matter led to a rapid increase in the number of casualties,” the Hamas-run Gaza government media office added in a statement.
The strikes hit before sunrise as people gathered in a mosque inside the school for prayers, a witness said.
Abu Anas, who worked to rescue people, said: “There were people praying, there were people 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.”
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The Israeli army said its air forces “struck [a] command and control centre served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders”.
“The Israeli Air Force precisely struck Hamas terrorists operating within a Hamas command and control centre embedded in the Al-Taba’een school and located adjacent to a mosque in Daraj Tuffah, which serves as a shelter for the residents of Gaza City,” they added.
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“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and intelligence information,” it added.
Israel has been at war with Hamas in Gaza since the militant group’s 7 October attack, which saw 1,200 people massacred in southern Israel and 250 more taken hostage.
Since then, Israel has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to figures from health officials in the enclave, who say thousands of others are feared dead under the rubble.
According to the United Nations, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged in the war as of 6 July.
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.
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.
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