Israeli bombing of school in Gaza leaves 27 dead

Deir Al-Balah. At least 27 people were killed Thursday in an Israeli attack on a school converted into a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza, according to local health officials. The Israeli army said it had acted against insurgents hiding among the civilian population, without offering evidence.

Israel continues to attack what it considers insurgent targets throughout the Strip, although attention now falls on its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and rising tensions with Iran. The Israeli army launched a ground and air operation against Hamas in northern Gaza earlier this week.

Separately, the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon said an Israeli tank fired on its headquarters in the town of Naqoura, hitting a guard tower and wounding two troops who were hospitalized. The attack sparked widespread condemnation and led Italy’s Defense Ministry to summon the Israeli ambassador to express its protest.

The Israeli military said it is investigating.

The U.N. force said in a statement that its headquarters and other positions “have been repeatedly attacked.” He added that the army fired on a nearby bunker where Peace Corps troops were taking shelter, damaging vehicles and a communications system. He said an Israeli drone was seen flying near the bunker entrance.

The event occurred while the Israeli army continued attacking Hezbollah posts in Lebanon and while that group continued firing rockets at Israel, causing air raid sirens to sound in the north of the country.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said an Israeli strike on Thursday killed at least four people and wounded 17 in Karak, a village in Lebanon’s Beka Valley. The Israeli military did not comment.

Meanwhile in Gaza, the Martyrs of Al-Aqsa hospital, where the bodies were transferred, indicated that the incident in the city of Deir al-Balah, in the center of the besieged enclave, left 27 dead, including one minor and seven women. Several other people were injured, he added.

An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances arriving at the center and counted the bodies, many of which were mutilated.

“We appeal to the world. “We’re dying!” a man shouted.

The Israeli military said it carried out a precision strike against an insurgent command and control center located inside the compound. Israel has repeatedly attacked schools converted into shelters across the territory, accusing insurgents of hiding there.

Witnesses who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons said the attack occurred when the school administration was meeting with representatives of an aid group in a room usually used by police from the insurgent group Hamas, which is in charge of security. . At the time of the incident, there were no agents in the room, they added.

The Palestinian branch of the Swiss care group Terre des Hommes said in a statement that members of one of its child care teams were killed, although it did not specify how many.

“There were no militants, there was no Hamas,” insisted Iftikhar Hamouda, who had fled northern Gaza.

“We went to the tents and they bombed the tents… In the streets they bombed us, in the markets they bombed us, in the schools they bombed us. “Where are we supposed to go?” he said.

The Hamas government had tens of thousands of civilian police, who virtually disappeared from the streets due to Israeli airstrikes in the early days of the war. But the group’s security personnel, without uniforms, continue to control most areas.

For its part, Hamas has continued to carry out attacks against Israeli forces and occasionally launch projectiles into Israel, more than a year after its surprise and deadly Oct. 7 attack on the country’s south sparked the war.

Hamas-led insurgents stormed military bases and farming communities in Israeli territory in an operation in which they killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 more hostage. There are still around a hundred captives in Gaza, although it is believed that a third of them are dead.

Israel responded with a ground and air offensive on the enclave that has claimed the lives of more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish between civilian victims and combatants in their count but maintain that more than half of the dead are women and children. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90 percent of its 2.3 million people, often repeatedly.

In Lebanon, the political-paramilitary group Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel on October 8, 2023 in support of Hamas and the Palestinians, prompting retaliatory Israeli airstrikes.

Tensions rose steadily until a few weeks ago they escalated into an all-out war: Israel launched waves of attacks across the country and began a ground invasion, and Hezbollah expanded the range of its rockets to more populated areas in the interior, causing few casualties but disrupting everyday life.

Iran — which supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups in the region that call themselves the Axis of Resistance against Israel — fired about 180 ballistic missiles toward Israel last week in response to the assassination of senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant indicated Wednesday that his response to Tehran’s offensive will be “lethal” and “surprising,” but he did not offer further details.