The Deir el-Balah attack is the latest in a series of strikes against schools housing displaced families in Gaza.
An Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in the central Gaza Strip killed at least 28 people and injured dozens more, according to Palestinian authorities.
“Palestinian Red Crescent teams responded to 28 deaths and 54 injuries following the targeting of the Rafida school by the Israeli occupation army,” the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Thursday. The Gaza Health Ministry also confirmed the death toll.
“The Israeli occupation committed a new massacre this afternoon by targeting displaced people from the school (Rafida) in the Deir el-Balah region, in the central governorate, where 28 martyrs and more than 54 wounded arrived in hospitals,” the ministry said.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said children and women “were torn to pieces by the intensity of the strike.”
“I saw with my own eyes many torn bodies, which made their identification very difficult unless the family members managed to find out who they were from some placards affixed to their clothes at the morgue of the hospital,” Abu Azzoum said.
He said the Israeli army did not issue a warning before striking the building.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the strike targeted Hamas fighters operating from a so-called command and control center “integrated inside a compound that previously served as a school (Rafida )”.
She provided no evidence, but claimed the building was used “to plan and execute terrorist attacks against (Israeli Army) troops and the State of Israel.”
Thursday’s attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza, where fighting has raged for more than a year.
The attacks mainly killed children and women. Many schools run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) were also damaged or destroyed.
On September 26, at least 15 people were killed in another attack on a school-turned-shelter in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to Gaza Civil Defense.
The Israeli army launched a new ground attack in Jabalia, where thousands of families are trapped in their homes in a ravaged area that has already suffered multiple ground and air attacks.
According to Abu Azzoum, the Israeli army is “inspecting houses” in the camp and arresting men aged 14 and over.
They “drive them to undisclosed locations across the Gaza Strip,” he explained.
At least 42,065 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the war began in October 2023.