Israeli strike on Gaza school-turned-shelter kills 21
A spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency said more than half the dead were children
Gaza’s civil defence agency reported 21 killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday, the latest attack on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians where the Israeli military said it targeted militants.
A spokesman for the civil defence agency, Mahmud Bassal, said more than half the dead at the Gaza City school were children. According to witnesses, a group of orphans had earlier gathered at the building to receive sponsorship from a local aid group.
“Civil defence crews recovered [the bodies of] 21 people, including 13 children and six women”, one of whom was pregnant, said Bassal.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip gave the same death toll for what the Israeli military said was “a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command-and-control centre … embedded inside” an adjacent school.
Footage showed the ground floor of the school-turned-shelter covered with concrete rubble and mangled chairs and tables, and a gaping hole in the ceiling of what appeared to be a classroom.
Thousands of Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Gaza war had sought shelter there, Bassal said.