The Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian movement Hamas, said Saturday that 93 people had died in Israeli strikes on a school in Gaza City that the Israeli army said was serving as a command center for “terrorists.”
These strikes, the toll of which cannot be independently verified, are among the deadliest since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, according to data provided by the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Hamas denounced a “horrible crime” and a “dangerous escalation”, while Israel agreed on Friday to resume talks on a truce in the Gaza Strip on August 15 after an urgent appeal from mediating countries in the face of the risk of a flare-up between Iran and its allies on the one hand and Israel on the other.
Located in the center of Gaza City, the al-Tabi’een school hit on the night of Friday to Saturday was serving as a shelter for about 250 displaced people, the majority of them women and children, according to media sources from the Hamas government, which rules the Gaza Strip.
PHOTO ABED SABAH, REUTERS
View of the al-Tabi’een school hit by Israeli strikes
Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal reported several strikes: having “targeted two floors of the Al-Tabi’een Koranic school and the mosque [adjacente] with three missiles, causing the death of 93 people including eleven children and six women.”
“Dozens of people have been injured, some of whom are in intensive care, and there are many unidentified body parts and missing people,” he added.
The Israeli army indicated on its side on X that “the complex, and the mosque […] served as military installations for Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” used to “carry out terrorist attacks.”
“Bodies stacked”
Rescue workers were picking up bloodied bodies from a destroyed building and then transporting them to ambulances, according to AFP footage. “People in the school were performing dawn prayers” at the time of the strike, said a rescue worker who preferred not to be named, saying he found “bodies piled on top of each other.”
Awakened by explosions before dawn, Sakr, a Gaza City resident, went to the scene where he saw “children’s bodies scattered in the street.”
The UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Italian Francesesca Albanese, accused Israel of “genocide of the Palestinians” and Qatar called for an “urgent international investigation”.
Saudi Arabia also condemned the attack, calling for an end to “massacres” in the Gaza Strip.
PHOTO OMAR AL-QATTAA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A man covered in blood wears gloves as he helps pull victims from the rubble of the school hit by Israeli strikes in Gaza City, August 10.
On Thursday, Israeli strikes on two schools in Gaza City killed 18 people, according to the Gaza Civil Defense. The Israeli military also claimed that the schools housed Hamas command centers.
After ten months of war, the Israeli army continues to fight the Islamist movement in the Palestinian territory.
It said on Friday that it was engaged in fighting in the region of Khan Younis, the large city in the south of the territory reduced to ruins, after having called on the population to evacuate districts in the east of the city.
Resumption of negotiations?
The war has left nearly 40,000 dead in the small besieged Palestinian territory, where almost all of the 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced, according to Hamas.
PHOTO OMAR AL-QATTAA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A young man mourns the death of a victim killed in Israeli strikes on a school used by displaced Palestinians as a temporary shelter in Gaza City, August 10.
It has also exacerbated tensions between Iran and its allies, notably Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, on the one hand, and Israel on the other.
And fears of a conflagration have redoubled after the assassination, on July 31 in Tehran, of the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, attributed to Israel by Iran, and that, the day before, of the military leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, Fouad Chokr, killed in an Israeli strike near Beirut.
Iran and Hezbollah have promised retaliation, and the international community is scrambling to avoid an escalation.
On Thursday, the three mediating countries, Qatar, the United States and Egypt, called for the resumption of indirect talks on August 15 with a view to a truce, indicating that a framework agreement was “now on the table.”
Israel has agreed to send a “delegation of negotiators”, while Hamas, which this week appointed Yahya Sinwar as its leader, accused by Israel of being one of the masterminds of the October 7 attack, has not yet given its response.
Fears in Haifa and Lebanon
“Any agreement accepted by Hamas will also be recognized by us,” the Iranian mission to the UN said on Saturday, asserting however that a ceasefire in Gaza has “nothing to do” with the response promised by Tehran to the assassination of Haniyeh.
Lebanon remains on alert and there is also concern in northern Israel about the prospect of a major strike by Hezbollah.
Exchanges of fire along the border between Israel and Hezbollah have been an almost daily occurrence since the start of the war in Gaza.
The attack by Hamas commandos in southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom are dead, according to the army.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas, which has been in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007 and which it considers a terrorist organization, along with the United States and the European Union.
Its offensive in Gaza has so far killed 39,790 people, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry, which does not provide details on the number of civilians and fighters killed. It has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian territory.