Israeli airstrike on school in Gaza Strip kills 16 people

At least 16 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a school in the Gaza Strip and several others were injured.

According to BBC sources from the Hamas-run Health Ministry, the building provided shelter to thousands of displaced people in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

In their X-post, the Israel Defense Forces stated: “Based on intelligence from the Israel Defense Forces and ISA, the Israeli Air Force attacked several terrorists operating in buildings in the area of ​​@UNRWA’s Al-Jaouni school in central Gaza.”

The force further stated: “This location served as both a hiding place and an operational infrastructure from which attacks against IDF forces operating in Gaza were directed and carried out.”

The Israel Defense Forces said: “Numerous steps were taken prior to the attack to reduce the risk of harm to civilians, including the use of precise aerial surveillance and additional intelligence.”

The Israeli military said the Hamas group continues to systematically violate international law by using civilian structures and the civilian population as human shields in its terrorist attacks against the State of Israel.

An estimated 85,000 people have left the Shujaiyah district in the eastern Gaza region, north of the enclave, in the past week, UNRWA said. Latest data show that at least 66,700 more Gaza residents were displaced by Tuesday from the eastern regions of Khan Younis and Rafah, south of the enclave, after new evacuation orders were issued on Monday evening.

The Gaza Strip is effectively “split in half.” The blockades are not only restricting the movement of displaced people seeking shelter, but also that of aid workers trying to help civilians in need, a UN aid official said on Wednesday.

Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory, said via video link from Jerusalem that people had been forced to “restart their lives completely again and again”.

“For the past nine months, people have been shuffled around like pieces in a board game – forced from one place to the next and the next, with no regard for our ability to support them and no regard for the availability of assistance wherever they ended up,” he said.