Another night, more missiles from the Air Force Tel Aviv on a civilian structure, another massacre in the Gaza Strip. Just before dawn, the Israel Defense Force launched an attack against the “Al Sardi” school run byUnrwa – United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East – which hosted displaced people in Nuseiratin the central area of the Strip where the army announced on Wednesday that it had started a new air-to-land operation. Local journalists reported to the BBC that a warplane launched two missiles against the classrooms on the top floor of the building. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al Balah said it had received the bodies of 37 people killed in the raid. Hamas accused Israel of committing a “horrible massacre“. It is the latest massacre among Palestinians trying to find refuge as Israel expands its offensives in the Strip.
Among the victims there would be 9 women and 14 childrenreports Associated Press citing health officials. Witnesses and hospital officials said the school was filled with Palestinians Escaped from Israeli offensives and bombings in the north of the Strip. Ayman Rasheddisplaced from Gaza City who was in the school, said that the missiles hit the classrooms on the second and third floors where the families. He said he helped carry five dead people out of the facility, including an old man and two children, one with a broken head. “It was dark, without electricity, and we struggled to get the victims out,” the man said. According to some sources, in another raid launched against a house during the night the IDF killed six people.
Tel Aviv justified the incident with the hunt for terrorists. “The fighter jets conducted a precise attack against a Hamas compound hidden inside the school in the Nuseirat area,” reads the post published on October,” when around 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage in southern Israel. The army “has no information on civilian victims”, added the military spokesman, reiterating that in the school there were “between 20 and 30 terrorists who used the facility for attacks on the IDF in the Netzarim Corridor. The raid – he added – was “targeted, based on intelligence” also because the IDF knew of the presence of civilians in the area. The attack was “postponed 2 times in the last 2 days to minimize civilian casualties.” The rooms of the school where “terrorist activities had been detected” were hit. The spokesperson then claimed that the UNRWA school “was the fifth case” detected in the last month in which terrorists have used the buildings of the humanitarian organization and that they are “effectively operating under the flag of the United Nations in the awareness that the IDF is careful when approaching these buildings.”
UNRWA schools throughout the Strip are used as shelters since the beginning of the war, which forced most of the territory’s population, equal to 2.3 million Palestinians, to abandon their homes. Last week, Israeli strikes struck near a UN agency facility in the southern city of Rafah. The ensuing explosion devastated nearby tents housing the displaced families, killing at least one 45 people. The deaths sparked international outrage and the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the fire was the result of a “tragic accident”.
The Israeli army also announced that it had killed three terrorists who were trying to enter Israel from the Rafah area. The Israel Defense Forces say troops carrying out checks in the area encountered armed men, who opened fire on them. IDF soldiers returned fire and a plane carried out a raid, killing two of the gunmen. The third was killed a short time later by gunfire tank. According to reports, the army is investigating whether there was a fourth terrorist who may have fled the scene, but remained in Gaza.
On Wednesday, the IDF announced that military forces were operating “both above and below ground” in the eastern parts of Deir al-Balah and in the Bureij refugee camp, a short distance away in the center of the Strip. The operation began with airstrikes on militant infrastructure, after which the troops began a “targeted daytime operation” in both areas. Doctors Without Borders reported that at least 70 bodies and 300 woundedmostly women and children, were taken to a hospital in central Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday after a wave of Israeli attacks.
