More than 50 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in central and southern Gaza, with one air raid hitting a school where thousands of displaced people were sheltering, according to Palestinian officials.
At least 30 people were killed in an Israeli attack on Khadija School in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Saturday.
Fifteen children and eight women were among those killed in the attack on the school in Deir el-Balah, Gaza’s Government Media Office said, and more than 100 people were wounded.
The Israeli military said in a statement it had targeted a “Hamas command and control centre inside the Khadija school compound in central Gaza”.
The statement said the school was being used to launch attacks against troops and as a weapons cache and that it warned civilians before the raid.
‘Chaos’ at hospital
At Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, ambulances raced wounded Palestinians into the medical facility after the Israeli military attack on Khadija School. Some of the wounded also arrived on foot, their clothes stained with blood.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Al-Aqsa Hospital, described “a state of chaos inside the hospital as doctors are trying to provide wounded Palestinians with essential medical care”.
“The situation is absolutely dire; everyone in the hospital has suffered critical injuries. They are receiving treatment on the floor, in all departments, and all beds are over their capacity.”
Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs Gaza, has said the “massacre at Khadija School is a crime that confirms the Israeli enemy’s estrangement from all human values and its defiance of all laws of war.”
“We call on the international community and the United Nations to break the policy of silence and take steps to force the occupation to stop its crimes,” it said.
At least 39,258 people have been killed and more than 90,000 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October, according to Palestinian officials. Israel launched the war after the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel killed at least 1,139 people, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on Israeli statistics, and about 250 people were taken captive.
The attack on the school on Saturday came after at least 23 people were killed in Israeli attacks on Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the ministry said.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza, said the attacks on Khan Younis were reported to have been conducted before evacuation order leaflets were dropped, phone calls were made, and text messages were sent from the Israeli military to Palestinians in the area.
Approximately 170 people have been killed “and hundreds wounded” in an Israeli operation in Khan Younis since Monday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.
The United Nations humanitarian agency said on Friday that more than 180,000 people had been displaced in the Khan Younis area between Monday and Thursday, after the Israeli military on Monday issued evacuation orders for parts of the southern city, including an area previously designated a safe humanitarian zone.
UN agencies have condemned Israel’s displacement of Gaza’s civilian population and military attacks on areas previously declared as humanitarian safe zones.
