The civil protection agency in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday that 15 people were killed in an attack on a school sheltering war displaced people, where the Israeli military said it had targeted “terrorists”.
The attack on the UN-run Abu Arbain site in the Nusserat camp in central Gaza was the fifth attack on the school-turned-shelter in eight days.
Civil protection agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP that “thousands of displaced people” were staying at the Abu Arbain school. He said most of the dead were women and children.
Nuseirat schools had been the target of two earlier attacks as Israel continues its offensive against Hamas Palestinian militants, who launched the war by attacking Israel on October 7.
The Israeli military said its air force had “strike several terrorists operating in the area of the UNRWA Abu Araban school building in Nuseirat”.
It said the building served as a “shelter” and base for “attacks” on Israeli soldiers.
AFPTV images showed the three-storey compound uprooted, with clothes and bedding strewn over the railings. A wall bearing the UN logo was blown off and rooms inside were damaged.
On 6 July Israeli aircraft attacked the al-Jawani school in Nuseirat, which is run by the United Nations Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). UNRWA said about 2,000 people were sheltering there at the time.
The next day, an attack on the church-run Holy Family School in Gaza City, north of the territory, killed four people, according to the Civil Defense Agency.
On Monday, Israel attacked another Nuseirat school and again said it was targeting “terrorists”.
The next day, a hospital source said at least 29 people were killed in an attack on the entrance of the al-Awda school in the Khan Younis area of southern Gaza.
Israel says Hamas uses schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure for military purposes. Hamas denies this charge.
France and Germany on Wednesday called for an investigation into the school strike.
After the al-Jouni attack, UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told AFP that when the fighting began “we closed the schools and they became shelters.”
UNRWA is the main relief agency in Gaza, but more than half of its 190 facilities, or 110, have been hit – “some more than once” – in the military response following the October 7 Hamas attacks, he said.
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