At least 30 people were killed after Israeli airstrikes hit a girls’ school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry said Saturday.
The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas command and control center used to store weapons and plan attacks in Deir Al-Balah, one of the areas most populated by displaced families.
CBS News’ team in Gaza reported that many women and children were among the victims.
Gaza’s health ministry said at least 11 other people were killed in separate attacks.
Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images
The CBS News team in Gaza confirmed that there were several strikes near the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, which is near the school.
Near the hospital, a wounded man lay on a stretcher on the ground. A body covered with a blanket and a dead child lay in an ambulance.
Inside the school, classrooms were in ruins. People were seen searching for victims under the rubble and some were picking up the remains of those killed.
Gaza’s health ministry and the Hamas-run government’s media office said more than 100 other people were wounded in the airstrikes, Reuters reported.
Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images
Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah confirmed the count to The Associated Press, and CBS reporters viewed the bodies.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had taken “numerous measures” to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians before the strike, “including the use of appropriate munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence.”
“This is yet another example of the systematic violation of international law by the terrorist organization Hamas and the exploitation of civilian structures and the population as human shields for its attacks against the State of Israel,” the statement said.
Anas Zeyad Fteha/Anadolu via Getty Images
Earlier Saturday, the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis.
The evacuation order came in response to rocket fire that Israel said came from the area. The military said it was planning an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has asked thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said at least 53 people were killed and 189 wounded in the strikes in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the airstrikes and the United States for its “total support for the bloody massacres committed against the Palestinian people.”
“The green light that (Israeli President Benjamin) Netanyahu received from the American administration pushed him to continue his attacks and massacres against the Palestinian people, the latest of which claimed the lives of dozens of people when the occupation army targeted a school housing thousands of displaced people in the city of Deir al-Balah,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement. “Every time the occupation bombs a school housing displaced people, we only see condemnations and denunciations that will not force the occupation to stop its bloody aggression.”
Netanyahu, during a trip to the United States this week, met with President Bidengave a speech before Congress and met with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
After their meeting, the White House said in a statement that Biden had expressed to Netanyahu “the need to close the remaining gaps, finalize the agreement as soon as possible, bring the hostages home and achieve a lasting end to the conflict.” war in Gaza” . “
The planned attack comes on the eve of a planned meeting in Italy between U.S., Egyptian, Qatari and Israeli officials to discuss ongoing negotiations over the hostage release and a cease-fire. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Sunday with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad Director David Barnea and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, according to U.S. and Egyptian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
It is the second evacuation order issued in a week that targets part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer area covered in tent camps with no sanitation or medical facilities and limited access to aid, according to the United Nations and aid groups. Israel expanded the zone in May to accommodate people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time was crowded.
According to Israeli estimates, some 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being repeatedly displaced in search of safety during Israel’s ground and air campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be hit and was “not a safe area, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order as people seeking shelter there were constantly being displaced.
“To call these orders evacuation orders doesn’t do justice to what that means,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s communications director. “These are forced displacement orders. What’s happening is that when people get these orders, they have very little time to move.”
Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven people killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight Saturday into Sunday in Zawaida, central Gaza. Members of two families – the parents and their two children and a mother and her two children – were wrapped in traditional white Islamic shrouds as members of the community gathered to perform the funeral. As men lined up to pray over the bodies, weeping friends and neighbors approached individually to pay their last respects.
THE war in Gaza According to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its tally, the fighting has left more than 39,250 Palestinians dead. In February, the UN estimated that only 17,000 children were unsupervised in the territory today, a figure that has likely increased since then.
The war began with a Hamas militants attack southern Israel on October 7 The violence left 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 people remain in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
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