Four Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip, hospitals said on Sunday, as Israel attacked a former school in the war-torn coastal region.
According to al-Awda hospital, three victims were killed in a shelling of a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
A fourth Palestinian was killed in an attack in the Jabaliya refugee camp, Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza reported. An Israeli military spokesman said they were investigating the reports.
According to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, 24 people were killed in one day on the Mediterranean coast.
More than 41,200 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began, the ministry said. The figure does not distinguish between militants and civilians and is difficult to verify.
Israel has come under heavy international criticism for its high civilian casualties, dire health situation in the Gaza Strip and extensive destruction of the area.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reported on Saturday that more than 100 terrorists have been killed and rocket launchers, weapons caches and terrorist infrastructure have been found and destroyed in operations and fighting with Palestinian militants in Rafah in southern Gaza in recent days.
The claims could not be independently verified.
IDF strikes former school again
The Israeli military also said it had struck a command post of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in a former school in northern Gaza, days after Palestinian doctors said several people had been killed in a similar attack.
In a statement, the army said it had carried out a raid on a “complex that previously served as the Raazi El Shua school in Beit Hanoun.”
There are no reports of casualties.
According to the Israeli military, the building was “used by Hamas terrorists as an operational hideout” and “a place to plan and execute rocket attacks on Israel.”
The statement said measures had been taken to minimize the danger to civilians. Witnesses reported that Israeli forces first fired a single rocket as a warning for civilians to flee.
On Wednesday, 18 people were reportedly killed in an attack on a former school building in Nuseirat, including six United Nations workers.
The Israeli military released the names of nine suspected Hamas terrorists killed in the attack, including three employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
The allegations could not be independently verified.
Hostages killed in Israeli airstrike
Also on Sunday, investigations revealed that three Israeli hostages, whose bodies were found in Gaza last year, were likely killed by an Israeli airstrike.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the three hostages — two soldiers and a young woman of French nationality who was captured at the Nova music festival — were likely killed in an airstrike on November 10, 2023, that targeted Hamas commander Ahmed Ghandour.
The findings, based on a detailed analysis of the attack and pathological reports, were a “high probability assessment,” the statement said, though the IDF said it “could not definitively determine the circumstances of their deaths.”
The hostages were being held in a “tunnel complex from which Ghandour operated,” the statement said, adding that Israeli forces were unaware the hostages were likely inside the complex when they launched the attack.
Their bodies were recovered from the tunnel on December 14 after the Israeli military received “precise information” about their location.
“The IDF shares the families’ grief over this devastating loss,” the statement said.
Relatives of the 250 hostages taken to Gaza after Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel repeatedly warned Israeli leaders of the consequences of their retaliatory measures.
About 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza. It is unclear how many are still alive after nearly a year of captivity.
