Israeli attack on school in Gaza Strip leaves 15 dead, military says target was “terrorists”

The Civil Defense Authority in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip announced on Sunday that 15 people had been killed in an attack on a school housing refugees from war captivity. The Israeli military said it had deliberately attacked “terrorists.”

The attack on the UN-run Abu Araban compound in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza was the fifth on a school converted into accommodation in eight days.

The Abu Araban school is home to “thousands of displaced people,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP news agency, adding that most of the dead were women and children.

Schools in Nuseirat were the target of two of the earlier school strikes as Israel continues its offensive against Palestinian Hamas militias that sparked the war with their attack on Israel on October 7.

The Israeli military said its air force had “attacked a number of terrorists operating in the area of ​​the UNRWA Abu Araban school building in Nuseirat.”

It was said that the building served as a “hiding place” and base for “attacks” on Israeli troops.

AFPTV images showed the three-story complex still standing, with clothes and bedding being aired over the railings. A wall bearing the UN logo had been blown out and the interior was also damaged.

On July 6, Israeli aircraft struck the Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat, which is also run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). According to UNRWA, about 2,000 people were seeking shelter there at the time.

The following day, four people were killed in an attack on the church-run Holy Family School in Gaza City in the north of the territory, according to the Civil Defense Authority.

On Monday, Israel attacked another Nuseirat school, again claiming it was targeted by “terrorists.”

The next day, a hospital source said at least 29 people had died in an attack on the entrance to Al-Awda school in the Khan Yunis district of the southern Gaza Strip.

Israel claims that Hamas uses schools, hospitals and other public infrastructure for military purposes. Hamas denies the accusation.

France and Germany called for an investigation into the school strikes on Wednesday.

After the attack on Al-Jawni, UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told AFP that when the war started, “we closed the schools and they became emergency shelters.”

UNRWA is the main aid agency in Gaza, but more than half of its facilities, 190 of them, were hit in the military response to the October 7 Hamas attacks – “some more than once,” she said.

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