An Israeli airstrike at a school in Gaza has left at least 40 people dead and 74 others injured Thursday, according to the United Nations, Hamas and Palestinian officials — though Israel defended the attack and accused militants of hiding at the site.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health, led by Hamas, said in a post on Facebook that those killed in a strike on the Al-Nusseirat Boys Preparatory school included 14 children and nine women.
The Hamas-run media office accused Israel of bombing several rooms at the school, located in the Nuseirat refugee camp near the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. The school is run by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.
UNRWA said in a post on social platform X that the school was hit without prior warning. Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, said “the school was sheltering 6,000 displaced people when it was hit.”
“Attacking, targeting or using UN buildings for military purposes are a blatant disregard of International humanitarian law,” he added in another post.
Lazzarini said that since the war started between Hamas and Israel last fall, more than 180 UNRWA buildings have been hit and more than 450 refugees killed.
Israel accused Hamas of embedding inside the UNRWA school and claimed fighters who invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking another roughly 250 hostages, were sheltering at the site.
Israel claimed it was a “precise strike on a Hamas compound” inside the school.
“The terrorists directed terror from the area of the school while exploiting it and using it as a shelter,” the Israeli military in a Telegram post. “Several terrorists who planned to carry out terror attacks and promote terrorist activities against IDF troops in the immediate time frame were eliminated in the strike.”
“Before the strike, a number of steps were taken to reduce the risk of harming uninvolved civilians during the strike, including conducting aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence information,” it added.
More than 36,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza since the war began. Israel is facing international pressure to halt its campaign to destroy Hamas, but the military is continuing operations across Gaza, with a renewed focus in the central and southern parts of the small coastal strip.
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