Dozens of people have been killed and many more injured in an Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City, the Palestinian authorities have said.
The attack on the Tabeen school in the central part of the city took place on Saturday morning and was confirmed by both officials in Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
There are conflicting reports so far about the number of casualties. Al Jazeera said, citing Gaza’s government media office, that more than 100 people have been killed and dozens more injured in the bombing. Not all of the bodies have been recovered so far, it added.
AP provided information from the Gaza Health Ministry’s ambulance and emergency service, which put the death toll at 60, with 47 others wounded. The outlet described the incident as “one of the deadliest strikes” in the ten months of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Gaza’s government media office said in a statement that the number of casualties was so high because IDF warplanes “bombed the displaced people [at the school] while they were performing the dawn prayer.”
“We hold the Israeli occupation and the American administration fully responsible for this massacre,” the statement read. The strike “comes within the framework of the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing against our Palestinian people,” it added.
Palestinian journalists said the facility was hit by at least three bombs. Some people were reportedly trapped in the building, which caught fire after the attack. Emergency workers are unable to extinguish the blaze and rescue them, as Israel cut off the water supply to the area, according to their reports.
The Israeli military claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that it targeted the school because it had been used as a headquarters by Hamas, from which the group “planned and promoted terrorist operations against the IDF forces and the citizens of the State of Israel.”
“Hamas systematically violates international law and operates from civilian shelters, using the population as a human shield,” the IDF said.
According to UN data, 477 out of 564 schools in Gaza, almost all of which were turned into shelters for refugees during the conflict, have been directly hit or damaged as of July 6.
Israel began its military operation in Gaza in response to a cross-border incursion by Hamas last October, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage. More than 39,600 people have been killed so far and over 91,700 others have been wounded in Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.