By Deutsche Welle
Sep 11, 2024, 7:46 PM EDT
Gaza’s Civil Defense reported Wednesday that 14 people were killed in an Israeli bombing of a school used as a shelter by Palestinians displaced by the war, while the Israeli army said it was an operation against Hamas commandos, a group classified as a terrorist group by the European Union and other world powers.
“There are 14 martyrs and several wounded following the massacre at the Al Jawni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp” in the central Gaza Strip, said Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal.
AFP was unable to independently verify the death toll, which the spokesman said included “women and children.” A medical source at the Al Awda health centre in Nuseirat, one of the facilities where the dead and wounded were taken, told AFP that the death toll was 15 dead and 44 wounded.
The press services of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, said that this school run by the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) was housing 5,000 displaced people.
The Israeli version
The Israeli military said in a statement that its air force had launched a “precision strike against terrorists operating inside a Hamas command center” on the school grounds.
The war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, when Islamist militants killed 1,205 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data.
They also kidnapped 251 people, of whom 97 remain captive in Gaza, including 33 who the Israeli military declared dead.
In response, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas and launched an offensive that has already killed 41,084 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The UN says most of the victims are women and children.
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