An Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school kills more than 80 people

The casualty toll from an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza City school early Saturday has increased to 80, according to Palestinian health officials.

The Israeli military admitted the attack on the Tabeen school, claiming it targeted a Hamas command center inside. Hamas denied it.

Fadel Naeem, director of Gaza City’s al-Ahli hospital, told The Associated Press that the facility received the bodies of 80 Palestinians killed in the hit.

He said medical teams discovered 70 bodies and got body parts from at least ten others.

The school, like almost all others in Gaza, has served as a refuge for individuals forced to flee their homes by the war.

A video from the incident showed walls blown out on the ground floor of a massive building. Concrete pieces and twisted metal sprawled on the blood-soaked floor, beside clothing, broken furniture, and other debris. A blackened automobile with blown-out windows was shrouded in rubble.
According to Abu Anas, a witness who worked to rescue victims, the strike occurred unexpectedly in the early morning before daylight as people were worshiping at a mosque within the school.

“There were people praying, there were people washing and there were people upstairs sleeping, including children, women and old people,” he told me. “The rocket landed on them without notice. The first missile, then the second. “We recovered them as body parts.”

Three missiles slammed through the school and mosque inside, where some 6,000 displaced people were seeking refuge from the battle, according to Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders who work under the Hamas-run local government.
Many of the deceased were unrecognizable, and he predicted that the death toll will grow. Many of the casualties were women and children, he stated.

As of July 6, the United Nations reported that 477 of Gaza’s 564 schools have been directly attacked or destroyed by the conflict. According to local health experts, an Israeli strike on a school for displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 33 individuals, including 12 women and children.

According to hospital sources, at least 15 individuals were killed when Israel’s military struck two schools housing displaced persons in eastern Gaza City on Thursday.
Israel has blamed Hamas for civilian casualties in Gaza, claiming that the group endangers noncombatants by operating and attacking from schools and residential neighborhoods.

According to Israeli intelligence, some 20 militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, including top commanders, were using the Tabeen school campus to organize assaults on Israeli soldiers, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokeswoman, said in a statement on the social networking site X.

Izzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas official, denied there were militants at the school.

Shoshani also questioned the casualty figures released by the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Israel stated that the targeted school was located near to a mosque that served as a shelter for Gaza City inhabitants.
However, a cameraman for The Associated Press stated that the mosque and classrooms were located in the same building, with the prayer hall on the ground floor and the school above it. According to the videographer, a missile looked to have penetrated the classroom floor and burst in the mosque below.

The strike occurred as American, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators renewed their push for the two parties to reach a cease-fire agreement, which could help calm rising regional tensions following the assassination of top Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut.

Egypt, which borders Gaza and serves as a major mediator, said the hit on the school demonstrated Israel’s unwillingness to achieve a cease-fire agreement and end the conflict.

Jordan condemned the strike as a “blatant violation” of international law.

According to the Health Ministry of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s campaign has killed over 39,600 Palestinians and injured over 91,700 others. The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 7 offensive, in which militants from Gaza poured into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 more.

More than 1.9 million of Gaza’s prewar population of 2.3 million have been displaced, migrating throughout the territory to avoid offensives.

The majority are now crammed into ramshackle tent settlements on the Gaza coast, covering an area of nearly 50 square kilometers (19 square miles).