Gaza War: Israel reportedly claims 22 lives in attack on school

At least 22 Palestinians were killed and 100 injured on Sunday in an attack on a UN-run school in central Gaza that is used as a shelter for displaced people, the Hamas-run health ministry said.

The Israeli military said it had targeted a number of Hamas “terrorists” operating from the Abu Oraiban school in the city’s Nuseirat refugee camp.

Witnesses told BBC Arabic that there were no armed fighters on the scene and that there were children among the victims.

This was the fifth attack on or near schools within eight days.

Residents reported airstrikes and artillery attacks in central Gaza on Monday. Five people were reportedly killed when a house in the Maghazi refugee camp was hit. The Israeli military said its planes had attacked dozens of “terror targets” across the territory in recent days.

The Israeli military said it had attacked a compound where the head of Hamas’s armed wing, Mohammed Deif, was hiding along with the commander of the Khan Younis Brigade, Rafa Salama.

A US State Department spokesman said Antony Blinken expressed serious concern about the recent civilian casualties during a meeting with two senior Israeli officials on Monday.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to crush Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7 that killed some 1,200 people and took 251 others hostage.

According to the Gaza Strip’s Ministry of Health, more than 38,660 people have been killed since then; the figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

According to the UN, an estimated 1.9 million people – 90 percent of the Gaza Strip’s population – have been forced to flee their homes, some of whom have been displaced up to ten times.

Thousands reportedly sought shelter at the Abu Oraiban school, run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), when an attack took place on Sunday afternoon.

A homeless woman told BBC Arabic she had lit a fire in a hallway to cook when a nearby room was hit.

“As soon as the explosion happened, the walls of the room collapsed on us,” she said. “I saw a little boy whose leg was bleeding and a dismembered body that people were covering with blankets. I also saw a little boy lying in a pool of blood, his whole face bleeding.”

She added: “I quickly ran out of the school. I found my aunt at the school gate, hugging her burned little son. When I left the school, I saw many injured people lying on the ground and bodies torn to pieces.”

Another resident said his family had lived at the school for six months because the UN facilities were supposedly safe.

“There are no armed men and no reason to attack schools in this way,” he added. “The dead and injured are mainly women and children who remain in this school.”

Video footage from a freelance cameraman working for BBC Arabic later on Sunday showed hundreds of people walking past the rubble of a destroyed building in one corner of the school compound. A badly damaged staircase could also be seen through two large holes in a wall of the adjacent three-story school building.