Por Yemeli Ortega
Jerusalem, Aug 10 (EFE).- An Israeli bombardment of the Al-Tabain school in Gaza, The attack, which local authorities say left around 100 dead and dozens injured, could jeopardise international efforts to reach a ceasefire between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas and fuel the crisis in the Middle East.
The Israeli Air Force bombed the al-Tabain school in Gaza City, which served as a shelter for some 6,000 displaced people, while the Muslim dawn prayer was taking place.
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the enclave’s Civil Defense agree that the attack left around 100 dead and dozens wounded, but Israel questioned the figures, saying that they “do not align” with information from its Army or with “the precision munitions used and the accuracy of the attack.”
Gazan authorities expect the death toll to rise sharply as the wounded – many seriously – suffer extensive burns and severed limbs which cannot be treated due to a lack of medical equipment.
Israel justified the attack by citing the alleged presence of militants at the school, and said it had taken “numerous measures to mitigate the risk of harming civilians,” including aerial surveillance and intelligence information.
“This statement is an insult to the world’s intelligence. The 100 dead are civilians, there is not a single fighter among them,” replied Izat al Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau.
The gruesome images following the attack, showing massive damage to the school mosque, numerous charred corpses, bloody Koranic books and screaming children amid dismembered corpses, shocked the world.
The Gaza Civil Defense, which claims that the attack was carried out with three missiles, including an American MK-84 weighing almost a ton, denounced that the dead in the Strip “have become just numbers, with no direct condemnation of the Israeli occupation by the international community.”
EFE/EPA/MAHMOUD ZAKI
This comes as the international community is putting intense pressure on Israel and Hamas to sign a ceasefire after more than 10 months of war.
The mediating countries – the United States, Qatar and Egypt – called on the parties to discuss the “details” of the agreement next Thursday, an invitation to which only Israel has agreed.
“Horrified” world
EFE/EPA/MAHMOUD ZAKI
“The massacre at the al-Tabain school is a horrendous crime that constitutes a dangerous escalation,” Hamas said, blaming Israel and the United States, its main partner and arms supplier, for “the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians.
According to the UN, this is the 21st Israeli attack on a school serving as a shelter for displaced people in just over a month.
The Palestinian Authority, which governs small parts of the occupied West Bank, said that “the massacre of the worshippers is a failure of the international community and a crime that must not go unpunished,” because “granting Israel immunity is encouraging it to continue committing massacres in occupied Palestinian territory.”
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said he was “horrified” by the Israeli attack, while several Middle Eastern countries – Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates – expressed their rejection.
They were joined by France, Russia and Iran, Israel’s greatest enemy, which, together with the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, is threatening an attack on Israel.
Iran and Hezbollah have vowed to avenge the deaths of Ismail Haniyeh, who was Hamas’s political leader before he was killed in Tehran on July 31 in an attack Iranian authorities blame on Israel; and of Fuad Shukr, the Shiite group’s military leader, who was killed in an Israeli strike outside Beirut on July 30.
Iran has called the Israeli attack “genocide” and said it had completed preparations for “severe punishment” by Israel, saying the Jewish state sought to sabotage the Gaza truce by killing Haniyeh and the civilians at the al-Tabain school.
The war broke out on October 7 last year after a Hamas attack on Israel that left some 1,200 dead and 251 kidnapped.
Since then, the Israeli army has been attacking the entire Gaza Strip by air, land and sea, including areas considered “humanitarian” and civilian infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, mosques, markets and refugee camps, claiming that militias operate from these places.
The more than 10 months of war have left more than 39,790 dead and 92,002 wounded in the Gaza Strip – most of them women and children – according to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian enclave, controlled by Hamas.
Added to this are 10,000 people missing under the rubble and 1.9 million displaced people surviving in an unprecedented humanitarian crisis caused by the widespread destruction of homes, the collapse of hospitals, outbreaks of epidemics, the threat of famine and shortages of drinking water, food and medicine.
