CNN
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Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been shaken by a series of devastating Israeli attacks. The attacks have drawn renewed attention to the high number of civilian casualties and widespread destruction caused by what Israel says are targeted attacks against Hamas.
Several UN officials have described harrowing scenes in the crowded strip following large-scale Israeli attacks in recent days. Among other things, children with amputated legs were denied medical care after being bombed in so-called safe zones. The UN chief, meanwhile, said the devastation was “incomprehensible and inexcusable” and reiterated calls for an end to the fighting.
“We have never lived in such fear. There was blood everywhere,” Gaza resident Ruwaida Issa told a CNN reporter at a school that is hosting refugees and was hit by two Israeli missiles on Sunday. “We ran and looked for our children. There were human remains scattered all over the schoolyard… We came here to seek protection and it was in vain. There is no security here. We want this war to stop. We can’t take it anymore.”
According to local health authorities, at least 60 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks in parts of Gaza on Tuesday in the latest wave of attacks, including a five-year-old child. Since October 7, almost 70% of the schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza have been hit, the organization warned. The Israeli bombing, which has lasted for more than nine months, has turned once-bustling neighborhoods into desolate wastelands, triggered mass displacement, destroyed the health system and depleted essential supplies.
“Small children were sitting here safely, each on the lap of their mother or father,” an eyewitness in Nuseirat in central Gaza told CNN. “Suddenly rockets fell and tore them apart. Their remains flew against the walls and everywhere. Wherever you go, you are not safe anywhere.”
The Israeli military said early Tuesday that it had attacked about 40 “terror targets.” CNN cannot independently verify the IDF’s statements.
Israel launched its military offensive on October 7 after the militant Hamas group, which governs the Gaza Strip, attacked southern Israel. Israeli authorities said at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 others abducted.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, 38,713 Palestinians have been killed and another 89,166 injured in Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip since then.
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Palestinian eyewitnesses Ibrahim (left) and Abu Adel (right) described on Tuesday the horror following an Israeli attack on a school housing displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat in central Gaza.
Since Friday, Israel has launched a wave of deadly rocket attacks and attacks on so-called “terrorist” targets in the center and south of the Gaza Strip, while its military hunts down the Hamas leadership with the help of American-made munitions.
On Sunday, the Israeli military claimed it had attacked Hamas’ military chief and killed a Hamas brigade commander in an airstrike in Khan Younis. Israeli intelligence had previously said dozens of Hamas members involved in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel were killed in Gaza last week as a result of “increased activity.” CNN cannot independently verify the Israeli military’s statements.
The number of victims of the Israeli bombings over the weekend was devastating.
The attack on the Hamas military chief hit a refugee camp in Al-Mawasi, which has been designated by the Israeli military as a safe zone for Palestinians fleeing fighting elsewhere. At least 90 people were killed and 300 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. CNN has no way of verifying the casualty figures reported by the ministry because it does not distinguish between civilians killed and fighters.
Overburdened hospitals struggled to accommodate the dead and injured. A senior official at UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, described Nasser Hospital, which received victims of the attack, as “the most horrific scenes I have seen in my nine months in Gaza.”
“I have seen young children who have had both arms amputated, paralyzed children unable to receive medical care, and others separated from their parents,” said Scott Anderson, head of UNRWA’s Gaza office, in a statement. “Parents told me in despair that they had moved to the ‘so-called humanitarian zone’ in the hope that their children would be safe there.”
Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty Images
Palestinians and UN staff inspect the destroyed makeshift shelters following an Israeli attack on a UNRWA school in Nuseirat refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on July 15, 2024.
The following day, at least 22 people were killed in a double Israeli rocket attack using US munitions. The attack took place on the Abu Oreiban school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, where hundreds of people had sought refuge.
The Israeli military claimed its air force had attacked the site where “a number of terrorists” were operating, but residents of Nuseirat told CNN that the school, which had been converted into a UNRWA shelter, was mostly populated by women, children and the elderly.
“We’re pulling out a hand here and a leg there from the rubble. Civilians who have done nothing wrong,” said a man interviewed by a CNN employee at the scene.
Following the attacks on the school in Nuseirat, where thousands of displaced people had sought shelter, families and UNRWA teams helped clear the rubble.
In the schoolyard, displaced families hung their laundry, but inside, weeping women sat on the ground, mourning their loved ones – torn clothes and rubble lay in piles in the yard.
An injured woman and a girl in bandages cooked between classrooms, while families and children lined up for donated meals with pots and plates in hand and begged a man for some rice.
“We are scared… My daughter was injured, my husband’s children were all injured. The place where we were seeking shelter has collapsed on us,” Mary Al Sammouna, a displaced woman from Gaza City, told a CNN editor.
“They target everything: houses, people, stones, they have spared nothing. But we will stay here, even if we die here. A person cannot leave his home twice; we have no other place to go.”
Samir Tafesh, an internally displaced person from Gaza City, said the people who found shelter in the school were trying to return to some kind of normality after the Israeli attack.
“We are in the process of cleaning up. Thank God we are still alive after the heavy bombardment and are trying to return to normal life. We are calling for a ceasefire from both sides,” he said.
“We are afraid that there will be more bombings, but where should we go? We have no other place than this school. It is the safest for us,” he added.
Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty Images
Palestinians and UN staff inspect the destroyed UNRWA school in Nuseirat refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on July 15, 2024.
The recent Israeli attacks have increased pressure on ongoing ceasefire and hostage negotiations, which had already encountered another obstacle last week.
In a post on X Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the violence in Gaza and renewed his calls for Israel and Hamas to agree to a long-touted ceasefire agreement and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
“The extreme level of fighting and devastation in Gaza is incomprehensible and inexcusable. Nowhere is safe. There are potential death zones everywhere,” Guterres said.
“It is high time that the parties showed the political courage and the political will to finally reach an agreement.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly vowed to destroy Hamas, claimed that targeting the group’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, would improve the chances of an agreement to release the hostages rather than harm them.
“Hamas is weak. The harder you hit them, the more you push for a deal,” he told Israeli broadcaster Channel 14 on Monday. It is still unclear whether Deif was killed in Saturday’s attack.
The Israeli military is currently investigating whether he was killed, but Netanyahu acknowledged that it was uncertain whether he had died.
