Yesterday, Saturday, the Israeli occupation forces stormed a school in the town of Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip, which was housing thousands of displaced people, after besieging it and targeting it with gas bombs and fire. This resulted in the death and injury of dozens of Palestinians, according to eyewitnesses.
Anatolia Agency quoted witnesses and media sources as saying that the army forces arrested the men who took refuge in the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan School in the northern Gaza Strip, to escape the Israeli bombing in their residential areas, after emptying it of women and children.
A displaced woman who survived the Israeli attack on the school (who did not mention her name) said in an audio recording posted by media professionals on social media platforms: “Today (Saturday) afternoon, the army stormed the school and asked the women to go to Al-Qassam Square near it, while they surrounded the young men and men and arrested them.”
She added, “The army arrested young men and boys over the age of 15,” noting that “a number of them were released, not exceeding 10% of those who were arrested.”
She pointed out that “the women and children in the square near the school are living in tragic conditions, without food, water, or cover, amid the cold weather and the noise of the relentless bombing.”
In turn, the Palestinian Ibrahim Abu Rayash said in a post on Facebook on Saturday: “The Zionists are storming the Khalifa bin Zayed School in the Beit Lahia project, where my father, my mother, my wounded brother, the dentist Hossam, and my younger sister, the doctor, Israa, are present, and with them are more than 7,000 people, including the wounded, women and children.” .
He continued, “This happened after several days during which they were exhausted by the siege. They had no food, no water, no one heard them, and no one cared about them. They were treating their wounded in primitive ways without any equipment. They prevented the wounded from moving outside the school and buried their martyrs in the school courtyard.”
He continued: “Now, after burning and destroying everything around the school and flying drones over their heads, the school was stormed, they arrested the men, and took the women to a yard in the Beit Lahia project.”
A Palestinian photographer published a video clip documenting the moment an elderly person bid farewell to his martyred son, after the Israeli occupation targeted the entrance to the Khalifa bin Zayed School in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip.
Dozens of martyrs
For his part, the spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qudra, said in a press conference yesterday, Saturday, that the army committed “a hideous massacre in the Khalifa School in northern Gaza that claimed the lives of dozens of martyrs and wounded who bled to death.”
He added that the situation of the displaced people in the school “was catastrophic, without water, food, or treatment.”
Eyewitnesses reported to Anadolu that the army had previously targeted with sniper fire everyone who was moving in the school, while the school’s surroundings were intensively bombed.
Palestinian activists also circulated a video clip documented by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which showed a group of naked men leaving a school with their hands raised.
The activists said that this school is the “Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan” school.
Since the seventh of last October, the Israeli occupation army has been waging a devastating war on the Gaza Strip, leaving 17,700 martyrs and 48,780 wounded, most of them children and women, with thousands more missing and believed to have been martyred under the rubble, and massive destruction in infrastructure, and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
The Israeli aggression forced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents to leave their homes, and many of them were displaced several times. As fighting intensifies across the Strip, residents and UN agencies say there is now nowhere safe to take refuge.