LAST UPDATE | 4 Aug
GAZA’S CIVIL DEFENCE agency has said an Israeli strike hit two schools in Gaza City today, killing at least 30 people, while the military reported it had struck Hamas command centres.
These bring to at least 11 the number of schools in Gaza to be struck since 6 July, killing around 150 people, based on a tally of tolls previously given by the territory’s health officials.
“The number of martyrs in the massacre of the Hassan Salameh and Al-Nasr schools’ bombing has risen to 30. Dozens were also wounded,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Bassal said most of the dead and wounded were women and children.
He said the schools were housing Palestinians displaced from their homes in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas militants.
Israel’s military confirmed the strike targeting the two schools.
“The schools were used by Hamas’ Al-Furqan Battalion as a hiding place for its terrorist operatives and as command centres,” the military said in a statement.
Yesterday, a similar Israeli strike hit another school compound in Gaza City, killing at least 17 people, according to the civil defence agency.
The Israeli military has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilian facilities as command and control centres or to hide their commanders and militants. The Palestinian group denies the accusation.
Earlier today, Israeli strikes killed 12 people in Gaza, including four who were sheltering at a tent camp housing displaced people inside a hospital complex.
It followed a stabbing attack carried out by a Palestinian who killed two people in a Tel Aviv suburb.
Another attack was reported when Hezbollah said last night that it had launched dozens of Katyusha rockets at Israel.
The group said its latest attack, on Beit Hillel in northern Israel, was in response to Israel’s attacks in Lebanon which it said had injured civilians there.
Tensions have soared following nearly 10 months of war in Gaza and the killing of two senior militants in separate strikes in Lebanon and Iran last week. Those killings brought threats of revenge from Iran and its allies and raised fears of an even more destructive regional war.
A woman in her 70s and an 80-year-old man were killed in the stabbing attack, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service and a nearby hospital, and two other men were injured.
Police said the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant, who was “neutralised”, and that a search was under way for other suspects.
The rescuers said the victims were found in locations about 500 metres apart, adding to concerns that more than one assailant was involved.
Israel has been bracing for retaliation after the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike in Lebanon and Hamas’s top political leader in an attack in Iran’s capital last week.
Air strike on hospital courtyard
In Gaza, an Israeli strike earlier this morning hit a tent camp housing displaced people in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing four people, including one woman, and injuring others, health officials said. They did not say whether those killed were civilians or fighters.
An Associated Press journalist filmed men rushing to the scene to help the wounded and retrieve bodies, while trying to extinguish the fire.
The hospital in Deir al-Balah is the main medical facility operating in central Gaza, and thousands of people have taken shelter there after fleeing their homes in the war-ravaged territory.
An Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza city yesterday killed at least 16 people and wounded another 21, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which announced the toll today.
A separate strike flattened a house in northern Gaza, killing at least eight people, including three children, their parents and their grandmother, according to the ministry.
Israel’s military, which regularly accuses Palestinian militants of sheltering in civilian areas, said it struck a Hamas command centre.
Israel’s massive offensive launched in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
Heavy air strikes and ground operations have caused widespread destruction and displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
More than 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most have been killed during Israeli raids and violent protests.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
With reporting from AFP
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