Health Ministry: Israeli attack on UN school in Gaza claims 16 lives

The Gaza government said 16 people were killed on Saturday in an Israeli attack on a UN-run school where thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought refuge.

The territory’s health ministry, which condemned the attack as a “heinous massacre”, said 50 injured people were taken to hospital from the Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.

About 7,000 people sought shelter in the school at the time of the attack, the government press office said. Dozens of people searched the rubble after the attack to find survivors.

The press office said that the school was run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and that most of the victims were “children, women and the elderly.”

The Israeli military claimed that it had “hit several terrorists operating in buildings in the area of ​​the UNRWA Al-Jawni school.” Israel often makes such claims without evidence.

UNRWA had previously announced that two of its staff had been killed during a strike in Al-Bureij, also in central Gaza. The aid organization operates a large food warehouse in the district.

Paramedics said 10 people, including three journalists, were killed in an attack on a house in Nuseirat.

“Absolutely no place in the Gaza Strip is safe,” said civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.

The war began when the Palestinian Hamas group carried out an attack in southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,195 people, according to a AFP Count based on Israeli figures. Fighters also captured more than 250 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 42 who the military says are dead.

Hamas said the attack came in response to decades of Israeli occupation and ongoing aggression against Palestinians, including attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, deadly raids in the occupied West Bank and the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Since then, Israel has launched a devastating military offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 38,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry. Thousands more are believed dead and buried under the rubble, and much of the enclave lies in ruins.