At least 26 Palestinians have been killed and many others wounded after Israeli forces attacked a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, the strip’s Health Ministry said.
“The number of martyrs brought to hospitals as a result of the occupation’s targeting of displaced people in the Ibn Rushd school and al-Aqsa Martyrs Mosque reached 26, with several more wounded,” the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
“The Israeli occupation committed three massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in 45 martyrs and 256 injuries arriving at hospitals during the past 24 hours,” it added.
The ministry said the overall death toll since the war on Gaza began a year ago had reached 41,870, with 97,166 Palestinians injured.
In a statement, the Israeli military claimed, without providing evidence, that the mosque and school were being used by the Palestinian group Hamas as “command and control” centres.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from the Shuhada al-Aqsa Mosque in Deir el-Balah, said the building was “severely” damaged.
“We drove by the mosque this [Sunday] morning and saw the scale of destruction caused to it and the properties in the surrounding area, including many department stores on the main road,” he said.
Mahmoud said it took paramedics and civil defence crews nearly three hours to remove the bodies “because of the sheer level of damage that was caused”.
More evacuation orders
Meanwhile, the Israeli military issued more evacuation orders on Sunday morning for large swaths of northern Gaza, ordering residents to flee to the already overcrowded “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi.
The military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in northern Gaza that Hamas had established “terrorist infrastructure in your region, exploiting the population, shelters, and health facilities as a human shield”.
The orders came shortly after Israel on Saturday issued a similar warning to thousands of displaced Palestinians sheltering in central Gaza, saying its military was preparing to use “great force” against Hamas in the area.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place in the enclave is safe, including the humanitarian zones where Israeli missiles have hit several times.
“The war is back,” 52-year-old Raed from Jabalia told the Reuters news agency, before he and his family left for Gaza City.
“Dozens of explosions from air strikes and tank shelling shook the ground and buildings, it felt like the early days of the war,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced at least once since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 8. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced several times.
The Israeli army also announced it had surrounded the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
“The troops of the 401st Brigade and the 460th Brigade have successfully encircled the area and are currently continuing to operate in the area,” the military said in a statement.
Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmud Basal said multiple attacks rocked Jabalia through the night, killing at least 11 people, adding that more people were trapped under the rubble.
Israeli forces have bombarded Jabalia regularly since the start of the war on Gaza, displacing nearly all its residents.
