At least 25 people have been killed and dozens more injured in the fourth attack on or near a school in the US. Gaza Strip in just four days, health officials in the enclave reported Tuesday evening.
Dozens of people gathered outside the Al-Awda school in Abasan, a town in southern Gaza. Khan Younis governor, when the strike occurred, witnesses told the NBC News crew shortly after the attack. Some of them were watching a football game, they said.
Film material issued by Al Jazeera and verified by NBC News showed a game being played in the school courtyard before an explosion sounded. As screams were heard, people ran in all directions.
Shortly afterward, an NBC News crew filmed bleeding patients, including young children, filling the hallways. Many lay on the floor, crying in pain.
“I was walking, when suddenly I saw myself flying,” said Ahmed Wessam Kediah, 14, as he lay on a stretcher, his bloodied leg wrapped in bandages. “I saw all the wounded. Only body parts.”
Later, at the scene of the strike, the NBC News crew filmed a young boy lying crying over two body bags, while several others lay on the ground.
“They killed my father and my uncle,” he shouted. “They died. They died. They died.”
The Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday that they had attacked a Hamas fighter who took part in the Oct. 7 attack with precision munitions. They said they were investigating reports that civilians had been injured near the Al-Awda school, which they said was “near the location of the attack.”
Hamas condemned the strike in a statement. As efforts were stepped up in Qatar’s capital, Doha, to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the militant group later warned that Israeli attacks could jeopardize the progress of the talks.
If a deal is reached, it would end nearly nine months of fighting in Gaza, where local health officials say more than 38,000 people have been killed. It would also mean that hostages have been taken during The Hamas terrorist attack on October 7in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 others were kidnapped, would be released.
‘Death & Misery’
The strike was one of at least “four schools affected in the past four days,” Filip Lazzarinithe Commissioner-General of the United Nations’ Palestine refugee agency, UNRWA, said in a message on X on Wednesday.
“Schools have changed from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often end up as places of death and misery,” he said.
On Saturday, a UNRWA-run school in Nuseirat in central Gaza was hit by a strike, killing at least 16 people and wounding dozens, local health officials said. UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told NBC News that the school was serving as a temporary home to as many as 2,000 displaced Palestinians.
In a statement posted on Telegram that day, the IDF said it had attacked “multiple terrorists” operating in structures in the area of the school. It said the site had served as a “hiding place and operational infrastructure” from which attacks on Israeli forces were directed and carried out.
“Prior to the attack, numerous measures were taken to reduce the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of close aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” the statement said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request from NBC News for comment on possible civilian deaths in the attack.
The next day, the Holy Family school in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have expanded their activities in recent days, was hit in a separate attack, the Gaza Civil Protection Agency said in a statement. after on Telegram on Sunday.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which owns the school, said in a rack It was announced on Sunday that the facility had been “a haven for hundreds of civilians” since the war began.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.
On Monday, another school in Nuseirat, which Touma confirmed was run by UNRWA, was hit.
The IDF said it had attacked “several terrorists carrying out terrorist activities” and used a school “as a cover.”
Israel has maintained throughout the war that Hamas uses schools and other public facilities, including hospitals, for military purposes. Hamas has repeatedly denied this claim.
More than half, or 190, of UNRWA facilities have been hit since the war began, “some multiple times, some directly,” Lazzarini said in a separate report. place on X on Sunday. At least 520 people were killed as a result of those attacks, he said, and nearly 1,600 were wounded. “Too many were women and children,” he added.
The latest strikes come amid a warning from a group of independent human rights experts appointed by the UN on the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, marked by the recent famine in the enclave.
The group of 11 human rights experts said in a statement on Tuesday that at least three children, aged 13, 9 and just six months, have died of malnutrition in the central Gaza areas of Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah since late May.
“Now that these children are dying of starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that the famine has spread from northern Gaza to central and southern Gaza,” the group said.
According to the organization, at least 34 people have died from malnutrition since the beginning of the war, most of them children.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
