Israeli military kills 21 in Gaza school bombing – officials

At least 21 people, including 13 children, have been confirmed killed by an Israeli drone strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza, the enclave’s government has said. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claims that Hamas was operating a command center in the building.

The strike took place at the al-Falah school in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City on Saturday morning. Six women and a three-month-old baby were also among the victims, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. At least 30 people were reported wounded and two more are unaccounted for, in what the office called a “horrific massacre.”

An unknown number of displaced Palestinians were sheltering in the school at the time of the attack. Schools and other public buildings throughout Gaza have been turned into shelters, the majority run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), since Israel declared war on Hamas last October.

Israel, however, has accused Hamas of “systematically” concealing weapons, tunnels, and command centers within these buildings. In a statement on Saturday, the IDF said that it struck a Hamas command room embedded within the al-Falah school.

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“Before the attack, many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weaponry” and aerial surveillance, the IDF claimed. “The IDF will continue to act with strength and determination against terrorist organizations that use schools and civilian institutions as shelter.”

The strike came just over a week after another school in central Gaza, the al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat, was bombed by the IDF. Dozens were killed in that strike, including six UN aid workers. The IDF claimed, as it did after Saturday’s strike, that the school had hidden a “command and control center” inside the school.

The al-Falah school and the al-Jaouni school have both been bombed multiple times since the war began, with the latter building suffering five Israeli airstrikes in less than a year.

Video footage shot by Palestinian journalist Islam Bader showed emergency workers sifting through rubble after Saturday’s strike. Several floors within the building had collapsed, and large portions of its external walls were blown out.

Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel last October, killing around 1,100 people and taking roughly 250 hostages back to Gaza. Israel responded by declaring war on Hamas and imposing a near-total siege on the territory. After almost a year of Israeli bombing and ground operations, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the latest figures from Gaza’s health ministry. 

At least 90% of the enclave’s population have been displaced and lack reliable access to clean water, food, shelter, and medical care, the UN’s humanitarian affairs agency reported in July.